


We'll Always Have Copenhagen

by Anonymississippi



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Or maybe a prequel, we'll see how this goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:08:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4017484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow dropping Jesse off at the airport for his early flight turned into a 14-hour date in Denmark's capital city with a German woman hell-bent on getting under Beca's skin. So much for sightseeing and Bella bonding. </p><p>Dance-offs, drinks, and more details than Beca expected from someone uptight enough to call herself the Kommissar.</p><p>What the hey? You only do Copenhagen once, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“So you’ll be back stateside, on Sunday, right Becs?” Jesse asked, typing in his confirmation number at the kiosk. The computer computed, the machinery whirred, and the dispenser spit out a boarding pass.

“Hopefully by noon, if we aren’t stuck in Newark purgatory,” Beca said, loading her boyfriend’s duffel atop his single checked bag. He’d brought the piece along to store a bunch of records he’d acquired in a dingy subsection of Copenhagen he’d clammed up about when Beca started asking for details. Fine by her. When he and Benji and Bumper got together, sometimes it was best not to ask too many questions.

A Trio of Testosterone: the Terrible Trebles.

Bumper had come up with that.

Beca herself had opted for a city tour of Denmark’s dynastic houses with Jessica or Ashley and surprisingly, Stacie, who knew a disturbing amount about the sexual practices of European monarchs.

(“So that was Europe, and then there was Katherine the Great of Russia,” Stacie expounded, nose deep in a pamphlet printed about a suspicious looking velvet settee with fabric discolorations. “The thing with the horse—”

“We got it Stacie,” Beca had cut her off. “Equus.”

“Penis?”

“Believe it or not, you’re sorta close.”)

The point being, Beca had not wanted to squander her remaining weekend in Copenhagen after Worlds. Most of the Bellas were getting spa treatments at the hotel (a grandiose prize awarded their team for winning Worlds), but she’d declined and had instead been able to do the kitschy city tour with two of her girls that morning, and met up with Jesse for lunch at a café near the sound, Øresund.

Quaint.

Simple.

Pleasant.

It wasn’t really an issue that the couple had split for sightseeing earlier on. After all, phalluses before palaces, or whatever. He’d bought his musty records, and Benji had gotten to climb on top of the Little Mermaid statue and (thankfully) hadn’t been arrested for street performance without a license while the tourists stopped for photo ops.

And, like the dutiful girlfriend of three years that she was ( _quaint, pleasant, easy_ ), she’d seen him off on his flight that afternoon.

“I hope I’m not too jetlagged once I get back home,” he sighed.

“Here’s to melatonin pills and stupidly expensive liquor in tiny bottles,” Beca commiserated.

Jesse smiled tightly, maneuvering his baggage out of the kiosk line. He looked over his shoulder at a beckoning Benji, who had been glued to Emily’s side since the Worlds after party. Beca brightened seeing Benji carrying Emily’s extra bag. Mrs. Junk flanked their left side, directing the disillusioned young worker behind the Danish station at the airport _._

_Danish. In Denmark_.

Awesome.

Beca laughed out loud every time Benji cowed under Mrs. Junk’s openness about her sexual practices, and blanched from her glares at any suggestion of Emily’s.

(“Lemme tell you Benji,” Mrs. Junk had said at a fancy reception the day after Worlds, “the only places I break out my 5-octave range nowadays are the choir loft and the bedroom. Maybe a public restroom if we’re feeling frisky.”

Benji coughed, reddened to fire engine hues, then nodded. “Yes ‘mam.”

“Emily’s got a decent voice on her,” Mrs. Junk had commented.

“She sure does, the Bellas are in capable hands,” Benji agreed.

“But her range isn’t five octaves. And it probably won’t be for a while, after at least three months and talks about health screenings. Isn’t that right, Benji?”

“Hey mom! Chloe, Cynthia-Rose! Beca, Jesse! Oh look, snacks… Benji!!!” Emily crowed, chasing down an hors d’ouvres platter. She returned with two plates full of food, demeanor jittery as a Labradoodle’s. “What’s up?”

“Metaphors,” Beca.

“Embarrassment.” Jesse.

“Vocal ranges,” Mrs. Junk.

“…vocal ranges,” Benji silently agreed, then headed off to the dance floor with Emily, taking special care to leave enough room should a motor scooter need to drive between them. He likewise kept his hands above her waist.)

“You should get on, no telling what security’s like here,” Beca said, walking Jesse to the mass of people lined up in front of the checkpoints. She caught glimpses of Asian tourists with fanny-packs, overheard some British woman screaming at a child to _Unplug the bloody moBILE!!!,_ and noted a heard of robot people walking briskly in black.

She wondered vaguely where Interpol headquarters was located on the continent.

“Hey, you’re gonna do great,” Beca said, grabbing his shoulder.

“Isn’t that my line?” Jesse grinned, shiny eyes, open face, all support and understanding. Just Jesse.

“That firm won’t even know what hit ‘em,” Beca said, a meager attempt at encouragement.

“We’ll certainly see.”

“I still can’t believe you flew all this way since you start on Monday.”

“And miss my girl win on an international stage?” Jesse asked. “Never. Next award you win, it’ll be your Grammy for best collaborative holiday album.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing,” Beca deflected. “You should really take something for that unrealistic optimism.”

“A directive from the woman who just won a _world championship_ ,” Jesse countered, chucking Beca on the chin. “What about all the little six year olds who want to grow up to be a capella champions? You’re not really being a good role model.”

“I never signed up to be anybody’s role model. I just want to make good music.”

“I’d say mission accomplished,” Jesse hugged her close, and she tunneled into his shoulder like a burrowing rabbit. He smelled good. Familiar. Pleasant. Not drowned in Axe, yet like he actually showered, unlike the majority of men she’d passed on the street in Denmark. Jesse lingered a little before squeezing her waist and stepping back. “But I better head out—”

“Text me when you touch down,” Beca said.

“Will do,” he said, and pecked her on the lips.

Beca waved him off before heading back to the tram that made the return trip to the city centre. She shoved her earbuds in and pulled her hoodie up, jogging awkwardly through the mist to the stop.

_Easy with Jesse._

Beca huffed and rubbed at her tired eyes, getting unceremoniously shuffled about as the tram pulled up and passengers started piling into the bus. She didn’t want to think about Jesse. And how easy it was being with him. Or how pleasant, how familiar, how simple it all seemed.

How it just… was.

Beca pulled out her phone and chose a playlist at random, shuffling until the bass drowned her thoughts and she boarded the tram on autopilot. It was so crowded, international visitors arriving midday and crunching into the bus on their way to the city centre proper, checking into elaborate hotels or student hostels. She tripped over a backpack and narrowly missed crushing a little girl with tear streaks over her cheeks and a Hello Kitty backpack strapped to her shoulders. Even through her earbuds, Beca could hear the kid huffing away on a harmonica, annoying all in the front section of the tram.

The kid was going places.

She plopped back in the only open seat near the back that didn’t have luggage cases piled into it. Beca tried her best not to douse the fancy lady beside her with any residual rain water as she shifted about, pulling out her phone and Googling Copenhagen hot spots. The page had nearly loaded before she remembered her data coverage didn’t extend internationally, so she’d have to wait to log on to the wireless network at the hotel. She’d meant to get one of those tourist brochures at the airport before she left, but her mind preferred galloping away from her unsettling feelings of _pleasant, familiar, simple, not enough—_

So she skipped the brochure.

The kid with the harmonica had been shuffled toward the back of the tram. What was once endearing had now become annoying, which, if Emily didn’t sack up soon, would be the fate of the remaining Bella. There was potential there, just a shit-ton of awkwardness the girl had to get over first.

And well, Beca wouldn’t exactly be around to see her work through it. Not if things kept going as good as they were at the record label.

She exhaled a sibilant breath through her teeth and shot the harmonica kid an evil look.

Beca cast her eyes about the rest of the bus, bobbing her head along to the music in her earbuds. She found what looked to be an arrivals schedule in a brochure slot near the front doors, but didn’t want to brave the masses of people standing with their luggage when her stop wasn’t for another fifteen minutes. It took a while to navigate all the traffic on the return to the city centre, and unloading all of the arrivals added extra time to each stop.

Out the window the drizzly sky had brightened to afternoon sun, wispy rainclouds dissipating on the wind. Tiny cars passed on the wrong side of the road, as did cyclists with actual helmets. They circled a roundabout with a huge stone building (with frigging gargoyles) that Beca was almost _sure_ was the Royal Danish Theatre. She craned her neck around to get a better glance at the building, jostling the passenger next to her.

Through her earbuds she heard muted grumbling, and felt the need to apologize for being a brutish American. Just because she’d won a world title didn’t mean she had to be a dick about it.

Everyone already hated Americans without her adding fuel to the fire.

“Sorry,” Beca muttered, popping her earbuds out. “Just trying to see that building back there.”

“Det Kongelige Teater?” a heavily accented voice replied, at which the tall head of wavy blonde hair turned back to look out the window for herself. "Sorry, that's the Royal Danish Theatre, for English."

And no.

Ooooohhhh… please just— _no_.

“Uhm…” Beca mumbled, attempting to stand. Not _run away_ , just… stretch her legs. Right. Too bad friggin’ harmonica kid couldn’t take a hint and slide forward two feet.

“Is that the one you were looking—oh,” the lady replied, furrowing her brow as she turned back to finally meet Beca’s face.

Beca crooked a half smile, raising her shoulders in awkward discomfort.

Kommissar looked… well, nothing like she normally did. There was no trace of the heavy black eye liner and stage pancake. Her standard black mesh had been traded for a chic white blouse that buttoned up the front, paired with pressed charcoal slacks, a tiny pink pinstripe pattern crisscrossing over her never-ending legs. Her hair was down, a light wave to it, and her make up was minimal and flawless. She looked modish and du jour enough to have come straight from Milan’s fashion week, and Beca hadn't even recognized her.

Even traveling on an overcrowded bus run on children’s tears, lost luggage, traveler’s disappointments, and stranger’s farts, the woman looked impeccable.

“Heeeeey, there,” Beca drawled, unable to stand because the German woman (even dressed down) had the gravitational pull of fucking Jupiter. “Kommissar.”

Kommissar’s expression held in confusion, then morphed, sliding into one part seduction and one part curiosity that nearly liquefied Beca in her grody tram seat. If only the woman would keep her mouth shut, then Beca wouldn’t feel the need to retaliate, to raise her proverbial haunches every time the damned gem of a German called her—

“Tiny maus!”

Beca's head fell forward against the headrest of the seat in front of her.

“I did not recognize you in your hoodlum attire,” she said, pulling at Beca’s damp Barden hoodie. “I feared our paths would not cross again after Worlds.”

“It’s okay, I took pictures of you on my phone,” Beca admitted to the chair in her face, which generated a barking laugh from her seatmate. “And—!” Beca continued, shooting up suddenly... mouth moving but damned brain choosing now of all times to short-circuit.

“And…?” Kommissar led, far too smug for recently being awarded second best.

“Even though you looked breathtaking on stage, the pictures do you no justice!” Beca countered, which, was more of an insult to her phone’s quality than to her rival.

Ex-rival?

Who the hell knows any more?

“Oh, do I still fluster you, Tiny-Feisty Maus?” Kommissar said, turning to face Beca in the small seat. “Make you unqueasy?”

Now it was Beca’s turn to scrunch her forehead together. “Un _easy_?”

“Yes, exactly,” Kommissar said, crossing her legs one over the other and lifting her left arm to slide into place along the back of Beca’s seat. She leaned into Beca’s ear and nudged her side before whispering, “I make you… uneasy?”

“You…” Beca began, but her mouth kept doing that _thing_ where it wasn’t connecting to her _brain_ , leaving her jaw unhinged like some demented fish sucking air.

“There, there, tiny Bella, you know it’s all in good fun, ja?” Kommissar said, bumping Beca good-naturedly on the shoulder as she fell back and gave up the ground, returning to her designated personal space.

And it was the first time Beca had seen the woman smile without a smirk, teeth flashing, lips crinkling, eyes squinting. It seemed pretty damned sincere, and Beca _hated_ it because the woman looked just as good playful as she did hostile.

“Your team won, and I concede that the Bellas put on a good performance.”

Beca flushed, crossing her arms and shoving her hands into her armpits. She didn’t trust herself not to reach out and stroke—or strangle—her seatmate.

“I… well… you…”

“I believe the correct answer is, ‘thank you’,” Kommissar said, attempting to maintain eye contact with a shaken Beca.

“I… danke,” Beca replied, gaze fixed to the back of the seat in front of her.

“Danke?” Kommisar asked, setting a hand on Beca’s knee to force her attention.

"Du sprichst Deutsch?”

“Ja. Ein bisschen,” Beca returned, shrugging her shoulders. “Your hands feel like clouds.”

Kommissar gave her a pointed look, yet, mercifully, did not comment.

“I suppose you may add a slight bit more of my respect to your Bellas,” Kommissar said, holding up her thumb and index in a ‘pinching’ position. “But not much.”

“Right, because you speak eight languages.”

“Ja, but, if American universities are going to be teaching a capella groups foreign languages, I am pleased they chose German.”

“Oh, no, the Bellas don’t know German,” Beca clarified. “But one of my first mix tapes I ever made was of ‘99 Luftballons’, and it didn’t make sense for me to not know what the lead was singing.”

“Scheiße, _that_ song,” Kommissar swore, placing her head in her hand.

“Not a fan?”

“Hundreds of years of my country’s musical history, all forgotten in lieu of David Hasselhoff and a catchy 80s jam with a _Star Battles_ lyric.”

“I think you mean _Star Wars_ ,” Beca said, finally catching Kommissar in a mistake… For not knowing what _Star Wars_ was. God, she’d been hanging around Benji _way_ too much. “And besides, Captain Kirk was in _Star Trek_ , which—”

Another cutting look from the Kommissar.

“—is a completely different creative entity altogether,” Beca continued, muttering under her breath. “The more I say this out loud, the more I regret the conversational trajectory.”

“I’ve never put much faith in American steering,” Kommissar said with a conceited wink. “Das auto,” she intoned, but the succeeding grin added a levity Beca was unaccustomed to experiencing with her German nemesis.

“If I didn’t drive a Volkswagon, I’d have a lot better comeback for you,” Beca replied. “But what are you even doing here? Didn’t I see your crew load up at the airport just now?”

“I am not attached to my ‘crew’, as you call them. We are not an amoeba, gobbling up little stranded aca-people that stray from their herds,” Kommissar said, unfolding a brochure from her lap.

It took a concerted effort on Beca’s part not to ask to be gobbled up.

“You were looking at the Royal Teater, ja?” Kommissar segued. “Perhaps I was doing the same thing.”

“I just figured, with your world tour and all—”

“The tour resumes in two weeks, I’m capable of purchasing my own plane ticket. I was at the airport because I needed to review final details with Pieter concerning DSM’s itinerary for Toronto. He’s quite a driven showman, exuberant and competitive—”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“But finer details are… how is the phrase? Above his head?”

“Over his head, yeah,” Beca agreed.

“I just needed to speak with the members before returning to take care of some business in the city.”

“What kind of business?”

Kommissar laughed softly and handed Beca the city brochure she’d been perusing.

“ _Personal_ business, Miss Bella. Perhaps I should change your name to chinny… no, that’s not correct. Eary, something on the face,” Kommissar made a vague gesture to her own face, which… well, friggin’ _Michelangelo_ could have sculpted.

“What?” Beca blinked.

“Come, help me with the phrase,” Kommissar snapped her fingers, her eagerness cursedly endearing. “The meaning is inquisitive, curious, to put your face where it shouldn’t be.”

“I can think of a few places you can put your face…”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” Beca squeaked. “You mean like… to put your nose in other people’s business?” Beca offered, half-smiling at the blonde’s honest inquiry.

“Ja! Precisely!” the Kommissar spoke closely with Beca, and Beca could’ve sworn the woman’s breath was imbued with crushed daffodil petals, it smelled so sweet. “You,” Kommissar pointed, all play and no menace, “will be my nosy maus!” She laughed low, tapping Beca on the tip of her nose with a perfectly manicured index finger.

Beca was trying to regulate her breathing as Kommissar stood, the tram jerking to a stop.

Beca nearly flew forward, hair stuck in her mouth, earbud wires all tangled up, but Kommissar (in four-inch high heels, for fuck’s sake) maintained her poise and looked down with analytical interest.

“Is this not your stop?” she asked.

“Wha—huh? Oh, yeah!” Beca said, forgetting momentarily that all of the teams had been put up at the same ritzy Danish hotel.

“Come then, Nosy Maus. You are amusing.”

Kommissar shuffled past Beca and strode off the tram like a runway model.

“Yeah, yeah,” Beca muttered, heaving herself up before the tram took off again. “And you’re the pinnacle of humanity—fuck!” Beca cursed, and a haggard looking housewife of thirty-something turned to cover her harmonica daughter’s ears at the outburst.

“Yeah, well, she’s gonna learn it someday!” Beca shrieked, shoving past bodies to catch up with her maddening competitor.

 

* * *

 

 

“You should take a tour of the Teater while you are here, if you have the chance,” Kommissar instructed, waiting on the elevator in the hotel lobby. “It is magnificent, decadent, even. Especially when the symphony has a show. Or the opera, or ballet.”

“I imagine,” Beca muttered, eyes roving the woman at her side. She cleared her throat and followed Kommissar onto the gilded elevator. “Have you been there before?”

“Oh yes, many times.”

“Oh, well, I guess DSM has performed all over Europe,” Beca supplied.

“Yes, we have. But never at the Danish Royal Theatre.”

“But you just said—”

“Do not try to think so hard, Nosy Maus. You’ll wrinkle. Bad for performing,” Kommissar chided as the bell dinged and the doors opened to the fourth floor. “And you can really only do with so many deficiencies in competition. Luckily your original tune made up for your substandard dancing at Worlds, but I wouldn’t want you to lose your pretty face.”

Kommissar stepped off the elevator, inclining her head towards Beca.

“Auf Wiedersehen, Nosy Maus,” Kommissar said.

Beca craned her neck as the doors slid shut, her toes tingling because Kommissar had called her face _pretty_ , and her dancing _substandard_ …

Wait… wait a minute—

Beca shoved her hand between the closing elevator doors and instantly regretted her decision. They crunched her forearm and then bounced back, these European ‘lifts’ not quite on par with the door motion sensitivity Beca was used to in the good ‘ole Holiday Inns back stateside.

“BALLS!” Beca yelled, clutching her forearm. “Hey! Wait just a sec—”

“Yes?” Kommissar appeared instantly, three inches from Beca’s face.

How the hell—like an arch angel out of thin air—

“You just—and then I stuck—I—”

“There, there, words are hard, Nosy Maus,” Kommissar’s signature condescension was back to overtaking her perfect features.

“Our dancing is _not_ substandard,” Beca insisted. “We beat you, remember?”

“Yes, well, when you get into the top three of these competitions, so much of the scoring is subjective, wouldn’t you agree?” Kommissar asked.

“I—I don’t agree!” Beca retaliated, holding her arm even closer to her torso. “And the judges obviously didn’t.”

“The syncopated clapping and stomp routine at the beginning was intriguing, but not original,” Kommissar said. “The remaining bits of your routine depended solely upon pathos, not technique, _or_ precision. This is why I’ve resigned myself to be a good loser,” Kommissar spoke quickly, haughty and discrediting, just like that night of smack talk at the riff off. “Because I know I am better than you.”

“You’re better than me?!”

“I’m glad we agree, good talk, mausy,” Kommissar said, sliding her hotel key from her back pocket.

“I wasn’t agreeing!” Beca exclaimed, running agitated fingers through her hair. Her arm hurt a lot less than her pride at the moment.

“You must admit, your performance at Worlds was not, truly, your best performance. In the history of your career with the Bellas, do you honestly believe it was?” Kommissar asked candidly. “That is the sign of a professional. Recognizing flaws, substandard components to any show, and then improving with the next. Tell me, truthfully, little Bella…” Kommissar pressed, taking hold of Beca’s chin for good measure. “Was that your best performance?”

“It… I…” Beca stuttered, wondering how she’d come to find herself with a numb forearm and her face in another woman’s hand. “I’m a better dancer than you are,” Beca replied, which, really, was sort of a non-answer.

“You?” Kommissar asked, brows skyrocketing toward the ceiling in obvious incredulity. “You are a better dancer than me, Tiny Maus?” she mocked, releasing Beca’s chin and tapping her on the nose. “Ha!” she guffawed, throwing her head back like some cackling villain in an animated film. “You are so funny, it’s a pity you cannot come with us on the world tour. Though, you’ve retained your—” Kommissar flattened her hands and squeezed air inwards between them, as if she were smushing two sides of sandwich bread together. “—tiny stature. I should just put you in my pocket and pluck you out when I need cheering up. Like a little jester!”

“First of all, if by pocket you mean ‘pants’, then yes, I’d like to get in there,” Beca fumed, then shut her eyes and swore under her breath. “That’s not… nope… just gonna…” she huffed, refocusing on the actual slight to her person. “I bet I’m a better dancer than you. And I’ll throw down with you, any time, anywhere.”

“Really?” Kommissar’s smile widened predatorily.

“Uh, well, anytime you’re around the east coast. I’m on the budget of an intern, so I can’t just drop everything for an a capella dance off…”

Kommissar returned to Beca’s personal space, the constant infiltration of the three inches in front of her chest becoming less and less disconcerting and more and more welcome the longer it went on. Kommissar reached around to the waistband of Beca’s jeans, running her hands along edge. Beca stifled a whimper as Kommissar slid the Copenhagen city brochure she had handed over to Beca while on the airport tram out of its stowed position between waistband and hoodie. When Beca remembered to breathe, she turned her attention to the open map in Kommissar’s palm.

“You see this corner, here?” Kommissar asked, pointing toward an unlabeled establishment a few blocks off the quays in the city.

“Yeah…”

“Meet me there tonight, say, 2000?”

“Huh?”

“8 p.m., Tiny Maus,” Kommissar clarified.

“What, so you can jump me?”

“Jump you?”

“You are very tall and toned and perfect and I am… as you’ve said… very… not,” Beca said, craning her neck back to meet Kommissar’s eye.

“You think I am going to hurt you, in the middle of a populated national capital?” Kommissar teased, running a finger over Beca’s injured forearm. “Only your ego, when I win our little competition,” she finished, stepping back from Beca. “I very much look forward to it, good competition. But, I do have to attend to that business,” Kommissar turned away and drifted down the luxurious hotel hallway with a sway in her walk that Beca just _knew_ wasn’t her natural gait. Not that she’d studied the woman’s walk, or anything…

“Until tonight, Tiny Maus!” she called over her shoulder.

“It’s Reggie—Re—BECA!!!” Beca hollered, as Kommissar slid into one of the rooms at the opposite end of the hall.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beca skips on a night with her girls and instead goes to a strange Danish dance-off. 
> 
> What the hell is wrong with her?

“I still don’t understand why you’re not coming out with us,” Chloe fell backwards on the bed in a whir of skirts and glitter eye shadows, grumbling behind Beca. “Sight-seeing can’t have drained you that much.”

“I’ll probably just catch up with you later. Remember, I woke up like, five hours earlier than you,” Beca said, raking her hair into a messy ponytail. She was dressed in yoga capris and a navy, loose-fitting tank, the kind of outfit she’d don for a night-in. Or, well, a physical throw-down with a beautiful German mega-bitch who she was definitely NOT trying to impress.

“And I didn’t spend all day in a spa, letting questionable Danish strangers rub down my most intimate body parts.”

“This is so not how you do Europe,” Chloe huffed, rising at the knock on the door.

“Let’s roll, you twiggy strumpets!!!” Fat Amy yelled from the hallway, likely having pre-gamed before the Bellas’s night out in Copenhagen (if her accented slur was anything to judge by). “I got some great directions from this guy I met down at the docks about a club that rains confetti and goldfish every time someone plays a Rihanna mix!”

“Please don’t let them go to anywhere that rains seafood from the ceiling,” Beca advised Chloe, who was putting the final touches on her lip gloss.

“I better see you out in a few hours, Beca,” Chloe warned, strutting towards their hotel room door. “You don’t want to be on my bad side.”

“We already graduated, so what leverage do you really have, here?”

“I—!” Chloe began, but stopped as Fat Amy nearly busted the door down.

“CHLOE LET’S GO!!!”

“I’ll text you,” Beca said, feeling a little guilty about a promise she didn’t know if she could keep. It was still early, so she might very well get to meet up with the rest of the Bellas after they finished their dinner. Clubbing with her girls after… well, whatever the hell this was with Kommissar. Showing her up. Defending her pride, her title.

It was going to be fine.

“You better,” Chloe commanded, waltzing out the door.

Beca wasted little time throwing her sneakers and hoodie on, checking herself critically in the mirror only a scant three minutes before she decided she needed to jet. She had her phone in hand, a little bit of money on her person. If she was about to go to a sketchy back alley in Copenhagen to break-dance-fight a German, she didn’t want any of her good clothes getting ruined or stained with liquids of unknown origin.

She peeked out the curtain like a grounded child, watching her parents depart for the evening. A gaggle of Bellas traipsed down the sidewalk, looping the block and heading towards the heart of the city. Once they turned the corner, Beca grabbed her key and hoped for the best.

 

* * *

 

 

“Oh my God,” Beca said, regarding the host of blinking lights from the two-story establishment before her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I do sometimes ‘kid’, but not in this instance,” a dusky alto voice murmured over her shoulder.

Beca jumped and spun, tripping over the curb and falling right into oncoming traffic… until Kommissar extended a hand and pulled her out of the way of a speedy motor scooter.

“Take care, Nosy Maus,” Kommissar breathed, her words rebounding off the bridge of Beca’s nose. Beca felt Kommissar’s hands grasping her arm and waist in a hold so secure she could probably get rammed by a MAC truck and not be dislodged. “We do not want you to end up… what is it? Flattened? Like… road pancake,” Kommisar said.

“I don’t think a scooter would have flattened me,” Beca countered obstinately.

“You overestimate your stature.”

“Well… I… like pancakes!” Beca said, stepping out of Kommissar’s hold. "And would also devour you like a Belgian waffle... what?" Beca said, bringing her hand to her head in a frustrated groan.

“Hmm. Waffles, you say?" Kommissar asked coyly. "If tonight goes well, we’ll see about breakfast then, shall we?”

Kommissar winked, nudging Beca’s shoulder with her own.

Once Beca took another step back, she finally got a good look at the woman who, again, certainly didn’t look like she usually did; nor did she look like she was about to throw down in a back alley. Instead, the tall blonde was poured into a pair of black skinnies of indeterminate material, and topped off by a silky backless royal blue halter thing that made Beca question why she hadn’t just set up camp on the lesbihonest end of the spectrum once puberty set in. Kommissar's black eye liner had returned, complexion bronzed to perfection, her hair sleek and straight in a low ponytail that nestled between shoulder blades defined enough to slice a pineapple. If Beca hadn’t known any better, the woman looked like she was heading out for a date—

Beca crossed her arms over her hoodie, feeling immensely underdressed.

“You are ready, Tiny Maus?” Kommissar said, tugging gently on Beca’s hand. “We’ll have to see how Dante and Börgen’s measures up to its American counterpart, ja? I do hope these funds are transferable internationally,” she said, flicking the Dave and Buster’s gift card in her fingers.

“I… kinda thought that was just an American thing,” Beca followed, somewhat flabbergasted by the bizarreness of the affair, racking her memory to see if at any point that afternoon she had agreed to a _date_ with Kommissar.

It confused the hell out of her. They weren’t competing any more; she shouldn’t be having these… gastrointestinal issues. And instances of lightheadedness. And dry mouth. And pounding pulse. And just… overall… bodily discomfiture.

It was going to make the night ahead very difficult.

“American exceptionalism and greed—oh, I believe you call it capitalism?—it knows no bounds,” Kommissar remarked, giving Beca’s hand a squeeze. “When Hard Rock Café broke ground in Berlin, it all went on the hill.”

“The first Hard Rock opened in London,” Beca said petulantly.

“By _Americans._ An international market.”

Beca grumbled and suppressed an eye roll, wondering if she would ever get the better of her German counterpart.

“And it goes _downhill_ , when something goes to shit,” Beca corrected. “Just so you know.”

“ _Scheiße_ , I will never master your idioms,” Kommissar swore, opening the door to the Danish arcade-bar. “There are too many and they are all ridiculous and unrelated to the sense of what you mean.”

“I guess it’s a good thing I’m here to correct you,” Beca commented smartly, hearing the unaffected flirtation ( _I’m not flustered, she’s not in my head,_ _why am I saying these things?_ ) in her sentence only after she spoke. It was just… hard not to talk like that around the Kommissar.

Beca gulped and looked up at Kommissar as they stood in line at the counter to retrieve their Power Play cards. The blonde was staring down at her, nervous lips popping out into that trademark smirk when she met Beca’s eyes.

“Yes, I… I think it’s good you’re here,” Kommissar said.

_Well, shit_.

It was with reluctant acknowledgement that Beca conceded nothing about the next few hours would be easy. Or familiar. Or particularly pleasant for her.

She kinda couldn’t wait.

 

* * *

 

 

“I think the first thing to do would be to settle out little bet, don’t you?” Kommissar asked, leading Beca into the depths of the arcade. Flashing lights blasted, and pitchy blips and beeps sounded in every direction. Combine that with the smell of greasy bar appetizers, stale beer, European BO and the minty scent of Kommissar’s shampoo, and Beca was operating under some severe sensory overload.

“Bet?” Beca asked, too focused on how sleek Kommissar’s attire looked as compared to her own.

“The entire reason you came! Surely your memory is not as atrocious as your dancing,” Kommissar snarked, leading Beca to the _Dance Dance Revolution_ platform. The squares underfoot were slightly worn, but the music was blasting while the red and blue lighted arrows pulsed, awaiting two participants to do mighty battle on the field of preprogrammed arcade choreography.

“Seriously? This is your idea of a dance battle?”

“Spice Girls serious,” Kommissar replied, moving to the platform with her Power Play card at the ready. “You are not afraid, are you Tiny Maus?”

“You are so going down,” _on me_ , Beca wanted to finish, but bit her tongue just in time.

“We shall see.”

 

* * *

 

 

They’d racked up an obscene amount of points and had drawn a substantial crowd after roughly twenty minutes of DDR play, primarily because neither of them refused to back the fuck down. Beca was starting to feel more justified in her wardrobe choice, breaking a minor sweat as she jumped into a criss-cross and unraveled from a soutenu turn, then reversed once more on a pivot. She rose her brows and inclined her head toward Kommissar, who pulled a semi-stilted running man that morphed into a jazz square, but nonetheless hit the squares underfoot on perfect beat. The arrows on the screen were popping up in rapid succession, but neither woman was close to calling it quits.

Beca thought it was… nice having someone push her for a change. Instead of people depending on her to make the mixes, come up with the songs, score the arrangements… it was cool to just—compete mindlessly for a night.

Kommissar wasn’t bad to look at, either.

The German wasn’t sweating, but _glistening_ (of-fucking-course), and after every round she would dab gently at her chin and brow with a white towel to mop up sweat Beca imagined was purer than mountain spring water. Beca was ahead by a meager ten points, but felt she could extend that lead on the next round no problem.

“Not bad for a robot, Sound Machine,” Beca clapped, throwing her arms out and cocking her wrists gangster style when the machine declared her the winner of the round. “But not good enough!” she crossed her hands over her crotch in an X and the crowd cheered their drunken approval.

Kommissar blinked at Beca and the surrounding revelers, inching over to Beca’s platform with tight lips and tense muscles.

“Perhaps we should skip the preliminaries and go straight for winner-takes-it-all, ja?” Kommissar suggested quietly, neck downturned to meet Beca’s once-confident stare. Kommissar opened her mouth, and Beca was almost sure the woman was going to kiss her, right there, on a dance platform in a dingy arcade, until the woman shouted a series of incomprehensible Scandinavian syllables in her face, which was followed by a roar from the small congregation that had collected about them.

Kommissar moved back to her own platform and swiped the card for a final play, attention locked onto the selection screen.

“Of course you speak Danish,” Beca grumbled, setting herself on the platform.

“I do,” Kommissar said, grinning as she selected the final dance. “I have one condition for this final dance, however.”

“Bring it,” Beca said, moving her fingers in a ‘come on’ kinda motion.

“We’ve both scored perfectly on some of the hardest dances on this game; therefore, I do not believe it is a matter of perfection, of point acquisition.”

“Get on with it, Brunhilda,” Beca sighed.

“That is my cousin’s name.”

“You have a cousin?”

Kommissar grasped Beca's hand and wrapped their fingers together, stroking the flesh of Beca’s palm with her thumb.

“My rule, is that neither of us can let go,” Kommissar said, mashing the button to begin the game. The bass thumped and a snare snapped in syncopation, as an automated voice started the countdown over the techno music.

“But how will we go full out if we’re tugging on each other?” Beca asked, staring at Kommissar’s black nails at her wrist.

“It is less a case of who can acquire the most points, and more of who can fault the least.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Beca argued, stepping forward as the red arrow blinked.

Kommissar matched her step.

“No, I don’t think so,” Kommissar leaned to the top right corner, hitting her mark and leaning over to Beca’s side, kissing Beca briefly on the cheek.

Kommissar missed the next two successive steps but recovered quickly enough; however, Beca was frozen to her platform.

“Come on, Tiny Maus,” Kommissar said, jostling her hand. She stepped in beat with the directional arrows, hopping along while Beca struggled to regain a rhythm. Blue. Diagonal. Red. Back. Blue. Doubles, to the sides. “You are losing,” Kommissar said.

Beca shook herself out of her trance and regained the pattern, tromping with heavy footsteps on the multicolored platform.

“That wasn’t fair,” Beca grumbled, pivoting and dipping underneath Kommissar’s arm. Holding hands forced her to twist almost painfully, but she kept her fingers locked tight around the German’s hand. It was awkward and difficult and enraging.

“Think of it as who can withstand the most adversity,” Kommissar challenged, jumping into a side-step criss-cross and turning underneath Beca’s arm to realign their grip. Unraveled, the pressure on their forearms eased. “For example, I had to bend much more than you to turn,” Kommisar huffed, stamping away on the floor pad. “I suppose I deal more strongly with challenges, ja?”

Beca snapped her mouth shut and tried to focus on the steps, her hand sweaty in Kommissar’s hold. It didn’t _help_ , since the woman was still several points ahead of her because of that stupid stunt with the kiss, and the crowd around them was growing more and more anxious the longer the song played. Someone started chanting. Some of the workers even looked to be milling around the outskirts of the crowd. 

It was turning into a spectacle.

There was no way she was going to win… but maybe Kommissar didn’t have to win either. Using that ounce of feistiness and a crap-ton of determination that made her a frigging _world champion_ , Beca yanked Kommissar by the arm and wrestled her into a makeshift hold, neither of their feet keeping up with the speedy patterns on their platforms. Kommissar was midstep when Beca knocked her off-kilter, so taken aback she didn’t squirm initially. Beca clamped down harder as the German flexed her arms and tried to escape the pseudo half-nelson-turned-bear-hug Beca had employed to keep her opponent immobilized.

The countdown on the dance game began, and both of their screens were blowing up with missed steps and lost points. Neither would win this battle.

“Beca, let go,” Kommissar griped, barely extending her arms while Beca strained with all her might to keep the woman stationary.

“No.”

“I will pick you up and throw you off of this platform, Tiny Maus,” Kommissar threatened, crouching into an impressive fighting stance. If the woman stood up completely straight and Beca didn’t let go, Kommissar would probably end up lifting Beca off of the ground.

**Ten-Nine-Eight-Seven—**

“No you won’t,” Beca grumbled, trying to distract herself from the fact that she was basically speaking to the woman’s boobs.

**Six-Five-Four—**

“I won’t? And why is that?” Kommissar asked, ready to pounce like a jungle cat.

**Three-Two-One—**

“You like me,” Beca murmurred, as the game died behind them, a sparkling burst of blue and red graphics.

Kommissar’s eyes flickered down toward Beca’s and then cut away, roving the faces of the disappointed crowd that “Nooooo’d” at their anticlimactic finish. Numbers flashed behind them on their respective screens, but Beca wasn’t really paying attention. She released Kommissar and stepped down from the platform, brushing sweaty fly-aways out of her face.

“I didn’t let go,” Beca said stubbornly. “I mean, when you really come to think about it, neither one of us are super cool,” Beca turned her head down and fussily straightened her tank top (that didn’t really need straightening). “We’re both losers, we sing a capella,” Beca babbled, trying for an appeasing half-smile.

Kommissar’s face was devoid of expression.

“I have always found a cappella quite beautiful,” Kommissar answered, dabbing at her brow with that magicked-into-existence white cloth. She flung it over the railing of the game platform and rejoined Beca.

“Come,” she said, clapping her hands together. “You must be hungry, and I have an excessive amount of money on this silly card.”

“I could use some water. Or a beer. Or both,” Beca tried, fearing the ‘loser’ comment might have hit a bit too close to home.

“Well then, you’re with the right woman,” Kommissar grinned, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder. “I’ll let you stick to your weak hydration methods. Meanwhile I, as a proud German, am obliged to drink you above the table.”

“Under the table.”

“Why would anyone want to drink beneath the table? People put their chewing gum there,” Kommissar answered.

And, well, she did have a point.

 

* * *

 

 

“So you arrange the musical pieces?” Kommissar asked, sliding a massive stein brimming with German ale towards her body. She took a tremendous gulp, frothy cream-shell residue clinging to her lips in such a sinful way Beca felt the need for prayer. Or confession. Or holy water.

_Oh look, beer._

Spread out on the table of their booth was a series of piping hot appetizers, geographically diverse and on varying levels of delicacy as far as arcade bar cuisine was concerned. Beca was leaning toward the fried haddock and chips over the Scandinavian favorite of lutefisk. Plus, you can get a microwaved cheese quesadilla just about anywhere, Danish Dave and Buster’s notwithstanding.

After nearly scalding the roof of her mouth, Beca moved on to the succession of fruity drinks (D&B signatures), which Kommissar had forgone in lieu of German beer. Beca recalled hers and Pieter’s Caribbean-looking cocktails at the riff-off back Stateside, and decided that Kommissar was allowed to have more than one preference. It just bothered Beca that she couldn’t get a good read on the woman.

“Yeah,” Beca said, taking a sip of a drink at random. Wow. The Danish like their booze strong.

“I uh… I overlay bass beats and try to match the keys for smoother song transitions. I can always write in a key change if it’s an upper or lower third so the next song will sound good when we slide into it, but sometimes coming in a half-step lower or higher is too jarring for an audience,” Beca rambled, looking up at a silently sipping Kommissar. “The dissonance sounds strange to an untrained ear. Plus, if we ever want to go back and overlay choruses, it’s easier if they’re all in the same—” Beca sighed at Kommissar’s amused expression. She sipped through a tiny black straw and blew a rogue strand of hair from her face. “I don’t know why I’m telling you a bunch of stuff you already know.”

“Yes, the basics of music composition I understand,” Kommissar said, drinking deeply again. “Well, a bit more than the basics,” Kommissar amended, but did not expound. “Pieter does the arranging for DSM.”

“But… ‘Kommissar’?” Beca threw up some air quotes, then returned to sipping a cocktail that was probably seventy percent liquor and very little mixer. She coughed into her napkin and remembered alcoholic proofs were usually more potent in Europe than in the States.

God, she hoped she wouldn’t have to pick up any of the Bellas from a Danish hospital. Which was weird, since it was the first time all night she’d even really thought about her friends.

_Huh._

“A title,” Kommissar waved it off, her hand returning to her frothy beer. “To rally the troops,” she said brusquely with a little arm pump, a fake-commander’s voice. “My primary concerns are the production.”

“Which includes the choreography?”

“Yes.”

“So _that’s_ why you got so defensive—”

“I was _not_ defensive, Little Bella,” Kommissar clipped, leaning across the table with a wagging pointer finger. “I am just very proud of my team’s hard work.”

“Sure,” Beca said, chomping down on a quesadilla piece. Kommissar nibbled at a chip, the pair grazing and sipping in companionable silence as the minutes ticked by.

“So that part with the ship, at Worlds?” Beca asked. “The flag at the end? And the slow motion race? That was all you?”

“Ja.”

“That was really cool.”

“Danke.”

“Bitte. I’m… I can see your point about the judging or, well, competition being more subjective once you get to this level,” Beca said, taking another swallow of her blood-red cocktail. It still tasted funny going down, but not nearly as nasty as the Jäger-bombs and jello shots Stacie periodically concocted for a capella get-togethers.

“There is a… I forget the word in English,” Kommissar leaned forward, opening her hands to explain. “A…duality? An… opposition, perhaps?”

“Sorry, not following you,” Beca said, stirring the remnants of her fruity drink. It was basically rat poison at this point

“You have the technique,” Kommissar began, placing her hands on one side of the table. “Precision, articulation, difficulty levels of the pieces arranged, the choreography performed, etc.”

Beca threw the rest of her drink back and reached for a fish fillet the size of her fist. “Alright…”

“And then you have the _pathos_ that I mentioned earlier,” Kommissar said, shifting her hands to the other end of the table.

“Right…” Beca shrugged, hoping Kommissar would continue without her having to ask. Instead, the Valkyrie had her face tilted expectantly, like she just _knew_ Beca still wasn’t completely following her.

Sneaky bitch.

Time for another cocktail.

“Sure… _pathos_ ,” Beca mumbled around her straw. “Which means…”

Return of the sexy, condescending smirk.

_Oh, how I love to hate you._

“You did just graduate from university, ja?” Kommissar teased. “ _Pathos_ means a tug on emotions, a pull on the heart chords. A... sadness, of sorts.”

“Strings,” Beca said.

“Vhat?”

“Heart strings.”

“Yes, yes,” Kommissar continued dismissively. “It’s a component of rhetoric, of argument, and can be used in performance. Like you did with your little Legacy. You, the current leader, began the number, yet she had the final note of the performance. A symbolic, passing-of-the mic, right?” Kommisar asked.

At which Beca nodded, surprised by her competition’s attention to her performance.

Kommissar continued: “Now, the emotion that DSM inspires is awe, it is esteem, sometimes fright or fear, if we put on the best show that we can.”

“Yeah, that Muse song you guys did last semester was… well, really impressive,” Beca said.

“We perform with much… passion, I believe,” Kommissar answered, taking a measured sip of her beer while Beca flushed as dark as her strawberry cocktail.

_Damn Danish booze._

“And yet," Kommissar said, studying her beer, "if you are able to inspire not fear, but sympathy, you win. Or perhaps, these judges are looking for something more substantial than passion, something that… resonates,” Kommissar continued, seemingly lost in her own performance analysis. It was like watching a wild animal in its natural habitat. Intriguing, terrible, yet staggeringly stunning. “So even if you are inferior technically, your emotional appeal will compensate for your handicap in the other category of performance.”

Beca considered the statement, wondering if technical insufficiencies even had a place in the world she hoped to break into: music production.

“I disagree. It’s not as drastic a binary as you make it out to be.”

“Binary! Ja!” Kommissar snapped, then toasted Beca with her beer. “This is the word.”

“I _did_ just graduate, thanks,” Beca said sardonically, gearing up for her own discussion of performance. “You can have technique as well as emotional connection. _Pathos_. Whatever. It’s not like you have to sacrifice one for the other.”

“Then how come few performers can negotiate between the two?” Kommissar questioned seriously.

“I guess because it’s damn hard to do,” Beca answered, hunkering down to give herself fully to the discussion. A drink and a half in but she was still following Kommissar’s argument relatively well. “Look, I can sing, but I know I’ll never have the technical chops to make it as a legit artist. That’s why I do the arrangements. The sounds themselves I can tweak, I know, to make sound _better_. So if a song I produce comes off as haunting, or happy, or stirring, or sad, or just, you know, generally _awesome_ … it’s like, when you hear artists’ voices crack on old records. They just get so into what they’re singing that they’re consumed with it. And it doesn’t really matter if in the end you miss a note, or you go flat; it matters because you _feel_ something,” Beca finished, putting her hand on her chest. “Right here, y’know?” she mumbled, yanking her hand away because _God_ , how sappy could she get?

One thing she could say for the Bellas, they had turned her into the mushiest, most sentimental version of herself she'd ever been (graduation and looming life and leaving 4-year friends was kind of a big deal), and she both hated and loved them for it.

Kommissar shrugged, and popped a cheesy bite into her mouth. She followed with a gulp of beer, and hastily wiped her perfect lips. “There are many different performance philosophies,” Kommissar resigned. “I did not have the benefit of yours at the Conservatory.”

Beca stopped stirring her drink and sat straighter. “You studied at a conservatory?”

Kommissar’s eyes cut again, and she hastily reached out and chugged the last of her beer.

“Come!” Kommisar said, standing abruptly. “We still have far too much money on this card, and I have no idea how to make these little monsters eat the dots.”

“You do mean Pac-Man, right?”

“Grab your drink, Tiny Maus,” Kommissar instructed, extending her hand once more. “Let’s go shoot bad guys or align shapes or hit the metal balls with the little flippy sticks on the machines.”

“Tetris?” Beca asked. “Pin ball?”

“Yes?” Kommissar replied slyly, squeezing again when Beca took her offered hand. “Finish your drink, I am one ahead of you.”

Beca threw her drink back and gasped at their proximity. Kommissar was close, boxing Beca in, her knees hitting the back of the booth she’d just abandoned. She put an arm on the table to steady herself, while a flawless foreign hand made its way to her waist to keep her upright. The woman was basically _looming_ , neck cocked and breath hot and eyes dazzling enough for her to make it as a superstar.

“You will have another one, yes?” Kommissar mumbled lowly in German.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Beca asked, looking down at the hand on her waist.

“I have seen you drunk at the Worlds after party. I would not wish that heated mess on anyone, especially myself,” Kommissar said, her face morphing back to that mysterious sincerity Beca couldn’t quite get a handle on. “I only wish you to have a nice time, Beca.”

Beca tilted her empty glass at Kommissar, then set it aside on the table. She fiddled with the tiny black straw clinking against crushed ice, but tried to maintain eye contact when she admitted, “I am,” with only minor twinges of embarrassment flooding her system.

_Then again, that might be the Danish booze._

“Good,” Kommissar said, tugging her towards the arcade. “Now teach me to play these childish entertainments.”

“Everyone with a soul knows how to play Mario Brothers,” Beca argued.

“So I’m soulless?”

“No, divine creatures can’t be soulless—shit,” Beca said, moving abruptly past Kommissar. “If you’re shit at these, I think they’ve got bowling somewhere, and air hockey!” Beca attempted a subject change, picking up a gun at a run-of-the-mill Zombie shooting game. “And I bet they have a whole room dedicated to pool.”

“Swimming?” Kommissar asked, bewilderment yet another expression the woman could pull off flawlessly.

“Billiards,” Beca clarified, dropping Zombie number one with a single shot.

“Ah,” Kommissar said, pumping the plastic gun and firing with precision. “To fulfill your little fantasy of slow songs on a jukebox, suggestive cue stick comments, and me fucking you senseless on the pool table?”

Beca missed her shot and her jaw dropped, Kommissar popping zombie after zombie in the head with her stupid plastic gun and perfect face.

“I am only joking, Tiny Maus,” Kommissar smirked, while Beca composed herself and reloaded.

“… partially.”

Beca was subsequently devoured by a zombie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dudes. DUDES. Duuuuuuuuuuuudes. Like, there has been SUCH a massive response to this fic, thank you guys SOOOOOOO much! All of the feedback has been exceedingly magnanimous and kind, so I just want you guys to know I appreciate your approval of my becissar interpretation. This thing is gonna get extended, because the original draft for chapter two came out to almost 9k words. I hope it doesn't start to drag, but I think the end I'm cooking up will have a substantial payoff. Thanks again!
> 
> -A


	3. Chapter 3

“This is ridiculous,” Beca said, carrying a bucket load of tickets in each arm up to the counter.

She’d never brought in this kind of haul at an arcade before. Normally, she was far too drunk to actually do much good as far as tickets were concerned, but Kommissar brought out her competitive edge. She scored higher than she normally did on most of her favorite games (not because she was trying to impress, that was definitely _not_ it), and Kommissar was scarily expert at all of the games involving marksmanship: _Zombie Island_ ; _MI5 Coverts_ ; some _Halo_ knock-off in Swedish.

Beca, however, had her beat at the driving games; after she’d banged the virtual prostitute and killed her to get money back for bonus points in this arcade’s version of _Grand Theft Auto_ , Kommissar’s mouth had flapped open in a gape. At which point Beca had yelled “Fuck bitches, get money!” and accompanied that clever proclamation with numerous gyrations.

Kossimmar had then cut her off at the bar.

_No wonder the damn buckets felt so heavy._

With the tickets won between them, they’d likely be able to get some top shelf prizes, which included fancy Russian vodkas, French brandys, Italian ports and Highland scotches in pretty velveteen sachets, if Beca’s booze-addled eye did not deceive her.

“This is victory,” Kommissar said, rattling the handles in her impressive grip. “I know you’re new to it, but you’ll get used to the feeling if you pass much time with me.”

“You know I won three national championships, right?”

“I know,” Kommissar replied airily, once they approached the counter. “I just don’t count them.”

“You—”

“Are going to purchase something fun. Ruhig sein, _leibling_ ,” Kommissar said, turning her attention to the wall. “If we combine tickets…”

“Sure,” Beca said hesitantly. “This was basically your money anyway.”

“Money given to me, from that peculiar little man in his basement. It was a reward, so it’s no… sweat on my brow?” Kommissar asked.

“Sweat off my back… like, real effort on your part,” Beca explained.

“You see, these expression makes sense.”

The Danish teenager manning the ticket counter bundled up the bucket loads of tickets as the numbers kept climbing higher. There were iPads and tablets and other devices available, hundred-Euro music credits and fancy steins and snifter glasses. The Danish did not shit around with their D&B prizes. Then there were lower shelf items, stuffed animals, hackey sacks, crappy plastic toys, friendship bracelets and build-your-own-styrofoam-airplane kits. Beca’s go-to as a kid had always been the plastic xylophones, which, now that she had honed her ear, she always found woefully out of tune.

“You have half, and I the other, yes?” Kommissar said, indicating the number practically overloading the ticketing scale.

“You won more tickets than me, you should get more,” Beca countered.

“Nein, we’ll split them. I have already acquired something nice out of the evening,” Kommissar returned.

“What’s that?”

Kommissar strolled by the prizes with her hands behind her back, like a general surveying the troops. “Choose your prize, Tiny Maus,” she said without glancing back.

Beca groaned and cataloged all of the available prizes. She could always use fancy new electronics, but there were manufacturing alterations made for the European models that wouldn’t work without breaking the device open and switching it to ‘Murica settings, which she really didn’t have time for. Stuffed animals were a no, t-shirts a meh, and it’s not like she just had tons of room in her bag to take stuff home with her, what with all the aca-swag the Worlds organization had showered her with.

And really, she only got to take questionably bisexual excursions with fierce Amazonian/Germanic goddesses once in her life, so, might as well do it right.

“What’s the best liquor you’ve got up there?”

“Hvad?” the pimply teen asked from behind the counter.

“Liquor?” Beca repeated. “Drink?” she asked, then mimed a glass coming up to her lips.

“Alkohol?”

“Ja, alkohol,” Beca answered, and pointed toward the top shelf.

The boy gave her a once over Beca classified as irritating and douchey, then scrambled about behind the counter for the ladder. He bopped down and handed over a carved glass bottle with brown liquid on the inside, but she still had ticket credit. Beca performed a quick sweep at the counter, then indicated two D&B shot glasses hiding in the corner. Her spoils all wrapped up in a bag and ready to go, the boy at the counter handed her five remaining tickets.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Beca asked.

“Tiny Maus?” Kommissar approached, gripping the top of a brown paper sack with both hands. “You have settled?”

“Yeah, unless you want to buy friendship bracelets for five tickets and let bygones be bygones? I bet DSM and the Bellas would love to see us with matching accessories.”

Kommissar laughed, taking the proffered tickets from Beca’s hand. She ran her fingers along the flimsy paper sides, then tucked her mysterious purchase underneath her arm.

“Come, I have a better idea,” she said, stomping back towards the entrance of the building.

“Sure, sure,” Beca said, practically _jogging_ to keep up with Kommissar’s lengthy stride. “Be nice to the enemy, Beca. Follow her into the dingy corner of a European city, Beca,” she murmured under her breath.

“Hallo,” Kommissar popped out, doing that materializing out of thin air thing that sent Beca’s heart into a palpitating arrhythmia.

“Christ!” Beca shook herself, looking at the frankly ridiculous image of Kommissar’s torso poking out from behind a dark curtain. They were almost eye level now, with Kommissar bending down in Beca’s face. Beca took a step back and grimaced when she saw the picture booth.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Beca groaned, needing at least a few shots of that scotch she was holding onto like a lifeline before even thinking that something like this could sound like a good idea.

“Vhat?” Kommissar’s eyes brightened. “These are fun, Pieter and I do them in every city we tour.”

“Seriously?” Beca said, climbing into the tiny space.

“Ja, he likes to put them in his scrapbook.”

“Pieter has a scrapbook!?!?” Beca replied, gobsmacked but also extremely smug, reveling in the knowledge of Pieter’s dorky pastime.

“Promise not to tease him so,” Kossimmar said, pouting her lips. “He is a large baby.”

“I won't make that promise,” Beca said, shaking her head.

“You will not?”

“No.”

“You would use it against him?”

“No, mainly for my own twisted pleasure. I like knowing my competition’s dirty little secrets.”

“Well, his is more of an artful little secret,” Kommissar explained. “He likes to add stickers and cut the little shapes with patterned scissors,” she mimed scissors with her fingers and a concentrated face. With the black eye liner on, Beca could almost picture the hulking German man sitting at a tiny table, cutting out unicorns to plaster into his special memory book.

“No way!”

“I already give hell to him,” Kommissar said, flicking through the background and border settings of the photo booth.

“Give him hell.”

“This is what I said, ja?”

“It’s… a syntax thing. But Pieter, what were you saying?”

“Ja, he’s done the scrap book thing all his life.”

“How long have you been performing together?”

“With Pieter? Years. From university, then we went separate ways professionally, then together once more when we auditioned for DSM. He’s a good performer, a big brother...”

“Oh, well that’s—”

“—that I’ve slept with on occasion. Not to give you the wrong impression about Germans. We don’t sleep with our siblings,” Kommissar said airily, her focused locked on the photo booth controls. “Though, on one stop on the tour in America, we were in a strange, smaller city, Little Rock, perhaps? Yes, it would not surprise me if the people of Arkansas—”

“So you’re with Pieter?” Beca blinked, and the booth suddenly felt too tight, Kommissar too large, and Beca far, far too small.

“Vhat?” Kommissar asked, her accent slipping once her beers kicked in.

“You’re seeing Pieter?” Beca asked again.

Kommissar quirked her head sideways, puzzled, and abandoned the settings before her.

“I’m seeing him in three days for rehearsals,” Kommissar replied. “I do not understand—”

“Do you date—see— _be in a relationship with_ —Pieter?” Beca asked, tight-lipped and hurt, though she had no right to be.

No right at all.

_Do you fuck after every big performance? Does he get to hear you sing in the shower? Does he rub the kinks in your muscles after intense rehearsals?_

Beca was suddenly fully aware of her buzz, of her situation, of her stupid decision making.

What the fuck was she even doing here? She had a boyfriend, friends who were probably wondering where the hell she was, an internship she had to get back to on Monday, a _life_ , a real one, not some stint abroad with the woman who called her mean names and childishly smack talked her—

Beca scrambled about in the booth and pulled her phone out of her pocket, swearing at the little ‘2 missed calls’ icon she saw with Chloe’s name blinking out beside it.

“Of course not,” Kommissar said. Beca noticed Kommissar clutching the brown bag at her side ever tighter, shoving it behind her so she could turn toward Beca in the tiny space. “Pieter and I are the oldest of friends,” she explained. “I told you, we went to university together.”

“University? Conservatory? Which is it?” Beca asked with an eye roll.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kommissar said quickly. “Just know that I have deep affection for him. He is my friend, coworker, partner, a former lover. _Former_ , Beca,” Kommissar said, placing her hand on Beca’s knee.

“It’s not like it really matters,” Beca said, exasperated.

But also... angry at herself for even being exasperated in the first place.

This was just a few hours of her life. It was dumb that she was getting so worked up. She had a boyfriend and Kommissar was just… mending bridges before they parted ways for good. Being a good competitor. Making sex jokes because, what a capella performer wasn’t just the tiniest bit inappropriate? Their teams basically lived for _harmonic convergence_ and shit like that. Kommissar was just… being Kommissar.

As if Beca even knew what the woman was really like.

Just for confirmation: “You’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“Ja,” Kommissar replied, attention back on the settings, however… a bit less intent on her selection than before.

“Right,” Beca said, trying to brush it off. “So, how do these things work?” she asked, regretful of her snippy inquisition in the photo booth. “Just… snap-snap-snap?”

“We need to decide our poses before the camera—eh, snaps?” Kommissar tried, the sense of the word unfamiliar.

“You don’t screw around with these things do you?” Beca asked.

“Nein. Oh, but I do know what I would like to suggest, unless you have any objections?” Kommissar began, and Beca had yet to see such a… joyful wasn’t the right word. Kommissar seemed almost cheerful though, eager, a little glimmer in her eye like that moment on stage when all of DSM was paused during the Ludacris number and Kommissar crossed the finish line in slow motion—

“None whatsoever,” Beca said. “What’s your plan?”

“For the first, I will do the German face, and you will do the American face.”

“What’s an American face?” Beca asked.

“You know, the big lips, the smile with the open teeth, the head cocked to the side, very unnatural… the American face!” Kommissar explained.

“I’ve never felt less patriotic,” Beca sighed.

“And I will do the ‘German’ face,” Kommissar continued, smoothing her features to perfect nonexpression, a glassy lake. “Then we shall switch, and you do the German, and I’ll do the American. You will have a good German face. Your face is always angry when you think no one is looking.”

“Thanks,” Beca snapped. “What do you have planned for number three?”

“We have to pose like we are fighting,” Kommissar said easily. “We are competitors, right?”

“Well, we’ll see,” Beca said, unsure of her future with the Bellas or… well, music in general. “But I’m good with the ‘wanting to pound your immaculate face in’ pose.” It took a moment for Beca to register her words. And then: “Crap.”

Kommissar offered half a grin, and started feeding the tickets into the machine.

“Wait! What about the last one?” Beca asked.

“Freestyle. Make it a surprise face,” Kommissar said, bringing jazz hands with extended fingers up to frame her own. She dropped them and stopped smiling as the screen counted down in front of them, _3-2-1_ :

Snap!

“Okay, now I do the German face?”

“Ja!”

_3-2-1:_

Snap!

“Now we hate each other!”

“Easy enough,” Beca replied, snarling at Kommissar and bringing her hand up to the woman’s throat in a mock display of strangulation.

_3-2-1:_

Snap!

“God, I don’t even know what to do for a candid surpr—”

Beca didn’t finish her sentence, because Kommissar placed her hand on Beca’s cheek and tilted her face upwards.

Merging lips seemed to function as a secret German picture-taking technique.

Beca’s eye-bugging surprise gave way to contentment the more Kommissar’s mouth rubbed against her own, fleshy lips puckering and retracting, moving, delicately, almost like the German was fearful a bit more pressure would cause Beca to flee the photo booth in favor of the Danish docks. There was a hand on Beca’s jaw and another on her knee and _fuck_ , it just felt so nice to kiss minty lips and succumb to the damnable mystique the woman emitted. Beca closed her eyes and relaxed her lips and reciprocated with enthusiasm.

Kommissar opened her mouth and took Beca’s upper lip between her own, sliding her thumb up a cheekbone and back to dance along Beca’s jawline, beneath her ear, down the back of Beca’s neck near her hairline. Somewhere in her hindbrain Beca registered a _snap_ , but her conscious thought was rather preoccupied with the fingers tracing patterns over her kneecap. Beca’s hands moved of their own volition to Kommissar’s waist, fingers clutching and wrinkling fabric more expensive than her entire budgeted student wardrobe. Kommissar’s shirt was so soft, her hair was so soft, _she_ was so soft, softer than puppy kisses, than picnic blankets, lips like plush memory foam on one of those space-designed mattresses. That softness kneaded her own lips until Beca pulled away, their noses bumping, her little exhales so close to whimpers it was frankly mortifying.

Kommissar placed a kiss to the tip of Beca’s nose and brushed bits of face-framing flyaways that had fallen loose from her ponytail back behind Beca’s ears. Kommissar cupped her cheeks and withdrew in increments of millimeters. Beca felt those storm blue eyes on her, Kommissar’s condescension and critique and smugness replaced by an expression (or an emotion?) Beca couldn’t identify.

Beca couldn’t help her lips quirking, her puffing pants devolving into near _giggles_ for fuck’s sake, because if this is what the woman looked like when she felt insecure, then there was absolutely no hope in sight for one Rebecca Mitchell.

Kommissar returned Beca’s grin with a toothy smile of her own, and placed another quick peck on Beca’s lips.

“Surprise,” Kommissar whispered, stroking Beca’s cheek slowly.

“Yeah…” Beca mumbled weakly. “Big surprise on my end.”

Kommissar chuckled, hand meandering from Beca’s face down to her shoulder-arm-wrist, finally curling around Beca’s fingers. They both wore black nail polish, a little chipped after Worlds. To Beca, it seemed important.

“Would you like to—”

_Please don’t say call it a night. Please don’t invite me back to your room. Please don’t make me say no to you. Please sanity, come back to me in the form of a blunt object hurled at my head._

“—see the photographs?” Kommissar asked.

“Sure,” Beca said, which is what Beca would have also said if Kommissar had asked for an intense make-out session coupled with heavy petting in that tiny photo booth.

Beca came to and managed to climb out of the booth, grabbing her booze and waiting for Kommissar to exit behind her. The woman was a few drinks in but she still moved with ease and intention, a seasoned cadet performing drills. The curtain swished behind them as they exited, Kommissar turning to the little picture dispensary at the side of the machine. She plucked the strip of four photos from the slot and held them up for Beca to see.

“I think… better than what you have on your phone, ja?”

Photo 1: Stony-faced Kommissar, and Beca’s head thrown back with an über cheesy, performance-ready smile.

Photo 2: Broody, emo Beca, a picture that looked worse than her bitchy resting face ID from the record studio... but Kommissar. _Holy shit_. Her smile was so wide and her head was cocked back as she propped her chin on her fist in an exaggerated motion of giddy excitement.

“Your smile is like butterflies,” Beca whispered.

“Vhat?”

“Nothing,” Beca shook her head.

Photo 3: Beca fake-choked a sneering Kommissar, who had flexed her arms in a ‘pummeling’ mime that looked far too over the top to be considered threatening.

Photo 4: Well.

Well then. That’s just… _wow_.

“And you kiss like a porn star,” Beca muttered, because the picture of her lip-locking, eyes closed, wrapped up in a German embrace was… well… feelings were dumb and hard to pinpoint, so she just wasn’t going to.

_I’ve got friends, and Jesse, and a job, and an apartment, and a motherfucking country to get back to. This is dumb, this is dumb, this is so stupidly dumb—_

“You kiss as good as you sing,” Kommissar hovered over her shoulder, looking at the pictures.

“See, the way you talk, it always sounds like a dig,” Beca said.

“Dig? In the earth?” Kommissar asked, placing her hands on Beca’s hips from behind and _God,_ Beca would totally be okay with a tall blonde grinding her into the earth right now.

“Nein,” Beca said. “Like, an insult. Eh… die _b_ _eleidigung_. Or, uhm… die _b_ _eschimpfung_.”

She felt the grip tighten at her waist as Kommissar spun her around and tilted her chin up, forcing eye contact.

“When I say you kiss like you sing, I mean… Sie singen wie ein Engel, Beca.”

“An angel?” Beca asked, humbly skeptical. “Please.”

“You’re flat on your lower G notes but… I suppose one of those instances of emotion over technical prowess. If I say you sing a siren call, I’ll, well… the German word is _Selbstbewusstsein_. It will… _increase_ … your… self.”

“Boost my confidence,” Beca supplied.

“Ja,” Kommissar said, taking her hand and leading her through the front doors of Dante and Börgen’s. “Though why a world champion would need this confidence… it is lost to me.”

It was drizzling, so Beca pulled her hoodie up. The pair hugged the sides of the buildings as they walked the city centre, ducking under a covered bus stop to wait out a heavier spat of rain.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Beca picked up carelessly. “Maybe because you’re gorgeously perfect. And perfectly talented.”

And it wasn’t so much flustered word regurgitation as downright honesty, because Beca really _meant_ it this time.

“Nein,” Kommissar said with a sad smile. She leaned against the side of the bus stop, silhouetted by oncoming traffic lights. “I am not.”

_Try saying that when you aren’t backlit with a fucking halo, Princess._

“Just because some judges put some numbers on a score sheet—”

“I am not speaking about Worlds,” Kommissar corrected. “Everyone has their deficiencies. Perhaps mine are not so… apparent? Is that the correct word?”

“Yes,” Beca answered, scooting closer towards Kommissar. “Where… where are we going?”

“We have finished our dance battle, yes?” Kommissar asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“Then it seems we have no reason to keep each other’s company.”

“Don’t pull that bullshit,” Beca said, growing weary of the teasing hints and half-proposals Kommissar seemed to pitch with ease.

“Would you like to go back to the hotel?” Kommissar asked, casting glances down the block, pointedly avoiding Beca’s face. “It’s just over there,” she pointed.

“I…”

_What do you want, Beca?_

“I don’t think…”

_C’mon, Beca. What. Do. You. Want?_

Her phone buzzed in her pants pocket. One missed call from Fat Amy. A text from Cynthia Rose. Another missed call from Chloe.

And a missed call and voicemail from Jesse.

“Your friends must be worried for you,” Kommissar said.

“They can deal without me for one night,” Beca said, pocketing her device. “I’ve been trying to train them this year not to cry every time I leave the room.”

Kommissar laughed, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. Even when she was smirking, or sneering, at least the woman really _felt_ it. Beca would rather the real condescension than the fake understanding the German was currently trying to pull off.

“Let’s go,” Kommissar said, stalking off into the lighter rain, brown paper package tucked securely under her arm.

Beca, again, had to jog to keep pace.

“Where are we—”

“We’re going back to the hotel.”

Beca stopped on the street as the rain turned to a drizzle. “I don’t want to go back to the hotel.”

Kommissar turned, ducking her head down. The drops sliding down her hair and wetting her shoulders were like misted spray on a model in a _Sports Illustrated_ swimsuit issue. But her face was trained to blankness, unreadable, even as she moved back to Beca in three quick strides.

“When I say, ‘go back to the hotel’, I do not mean… I am not proposing…”

“I want to go somewhere,” Beca said stubbornly. “I’m in Europe. I’ve never been to Europe. When I get back home, this bubble is gonna burst, and I’m going to have to bust my ass at a no credit job everyday with people I don’t like, so I’m sure as hell gonna live it up while I’m in this really cool place with people I do…like,” Beca finished, far more composed than she would have expected. “I want… I want to go somewhere _with you_.”

The beat settled as she felt Kommissar study her body, her posture, her expression; the woman was probably gauging Beca’s resolve and weighing it against the innumerable ounces of alcohol they’d both consumed.

“Where do you wish to go?” Kommissar asked.

“I don’t know,” Beca shrugged, but the liquor bottle she’d gotten at D&B’s was growing heavy in her hands. “Somewhere we can drink this?” she proposed, shaking the bottleneck of the glassware. She peered down the street and darted backward as a passing cyclist splashed residual rainwater at her feet.

Kommissar laughed, and the drizzling stopped.

Beca flipped off the Kommissar with her free hand. She then shifted closer to the German, pulled her down by the front of her shirt, and kissed her in the middle of a Copenhagen mainstreet.

“Surprise me,” Beca said, breathless.

And then Kommissar _smiled_ , and Beca was done for.

“I believe I know just the place,” Kommissar answered, leading Beca off into the night.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, ginormous thanks to everybody who has subscribed or commented or kudoed! Some notes to consider:
> 
> -pretty much all German taken from Google, the least reliable source  
> -I've never actually been to a Dave and Buster's, so I took a little creative license with what a European version might have as their top shelf prizes  
> -Arkansas, don't be mad.   
> -feedback is always appreciated!


	4. Chapter 4

“This is all very exciting, but I’d really rather not be arrested for B&E in a foreign country!” Beca stage whispered, following Kommissar up the back entrance of Det Kongelige Teater.

The rain had turned the stone steps slippery and slick, the warm, buttery yellows of the exterior lights flushing the Danish mainstreet in a wash of glittery gold. It was all very dazzling, high from a kiss, buzzed from a drink, tantalized by a woman, a city… until Kommissar had athletically jumped an iron gate that led to the back entrance of a very old, very fancy theatre that the Danish police probably didn’t want foreigners breaking into for shits and giggles.

“How the hell—”

“Foot prop here,” Kommissar said, indicating a padlock that somehow constituted a ledge in the German’s eyes. “Good grip on the gate,” Kommissar said, curling her fingers around the bars. “And then hoist yourself up.”

“Not all of us have the upper body strength of Wonder Woman.”

Kommissar grabbed Beca’s tank top through the gate and kissed her between the bars. And _holy shit_ , that was tongue, licking and sliding and retreating—

_No wait come back—_

“You just need the motivation,” Kommissar murmured.

Beca stood gawking on the other side of the gate, scrunching her face up in agitated frustration. She shoved the bottle of liquor between the bars of the gate with far more force than necessary.

“ _Fine_ ,” she hissed, grabbing hold of a rain-slick metal bar, in the middle of the fucking night, where she was probably gonna get arrested, all for some Germanic Aca-Princess who liked _kissing_ her, mind-blowing as that seemed.

She hiked her foot up as far as it would go and jumped a little, propping herself on the tiny platform Kommissar had indicated.

“You’re lucky the Barbie manufacturers used your measurements to scale those perfect plastic dolls—”

“What are you grumbling about, Tiny Maus?” Kommissar asked, arms crossed over her chest, perfectly content on the solid ground below.

“Just how I hope I fall and smush you,” Beca sing-songed sarcastically, rolling over the top of the gate.

“You could try, Mäuschen, though I doubt you would succeed.”

Beca felt confident enough in her grip on her dismount to quip:

“Aren’t you supposed to say something really chivalrous like, ‘don’t worry, tiny-kinder-Bella-mousie-face, I will catch you with my strong German muscles and rounded Breton cheekbones’?”

“Why would I say such a thing, when I could instead watch you fall on your ass?” Kommissar retorted.

Bella scrabbled down the gate and landed in soggy mud, swearing, and wondering if she had officially gone off the deep end.

“Fuck you,” Beca said smugly.

“Oh, please don’t—what is the phrase?—raise my hopes up,” Kommissar purred, leading Beca through the back pathway to a side door with a dingy industrial light blinking ominously above the building's threshold.

Kommissar hammered on the door until it creaked open to reveal a svelte-looking older gentleman with an iron-colored beard, outfitted in a security uniform with a host of keys attached to his belt. His grimace melted into an ebullient smile as he tugged Kommissar forward and clapped her over the shoulder.

“Jonas,” Kommissar said warmly.

“Ih, sikke en overraskelse!” the man barked in a clipped, gravelly Danish. He pulled Kommissar out of the embrace and kissed her once on each cheek.K

Kommissar laughed, then continued, “Du vidste, at jeg var i København—”

“L—”

“Kald mig Kommissar,” Kommissar cut the man off, at which he stroked his beard in bewilderment, then proceeded to move past whatever she’d said.

“Jeg havde ikke forventet at se dig efter caféen , du sagde, du var møde med producenten fra London?”

“Ja, ja,” Kommissar nodded quickly, catching Beca’s eye in apology for the overlong back-and-forth Beca had no part in. “Og jeg forlader i morgen, men noget kom op —”

The pair stopped speaking and Beca watched Kommissar turn toward her, drawing her into the doorway from underneath the harsh exterior light.

“Beca, please meet Jonas,” Kommissar said, and Beca tentatively took the man’s proffered hand. “Jonas, Rebecca Mitchell.”

He shook with the strength of a fishing boat captain.

“Rebecca… Beca?” Jonas asked, his face splitting into what Beca read as a very telling grin. “ _Bella_ Beca?”

“Ja,” Kommissar said brusquely, and then, more rapid-fire Danish between them. It was all very strange, watching the jolly old Danish guard poke at Kommissar, whose cheeks seem to be lightening from gold to a cherry blush. It might’ve been the booze, but Beca wagered Kommissar had history with the man of a companionable sort. Beca was both intrigued and jealous, trying to fit half, crudely shaped pieces into place to fit a puzzle distorted, one she was attempting to finish under a pretty tight time limit.

_You’re leaving tomorrow, right?_

_Ja._

The man handed over a subset of keys to Kommissar and stood back as the German led Beca through the snug little back office.

“Tak,” Kommissar threw over her shoulder, at which point the sea boat captain turned night guard let out a booming laugh.

It reverberated through the cemented halls of the darkened backstage.

 

* * *

 

 

They traveled in the dark down a few corridors with windy twists, but Kommissar finally hit a light switch once they reached a rickety old staircase, a little more cloak-and-daggery than Beca expected. It was one of those single yellow bulbs hanging from a long wire, surrounded by ropes and pulley systems Beca dared not touch for fear of lighting systems coming down on her head.

_Maybe that’s the blunt object I was wishing for earlier._

“Try to keep up, Tiny Maus,” Kommissar said from the head of the stairs.

On her ascent, Beca heard three sonorous _thuds_ echoing above her. She emerged from the staircase in the dark and tiptoed toward the shuffling sound of what she prayed was Kommissar.

Getting attacked by some theater phantom was not on her bucket list for Europe.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Beca asked, extending her hands into a softening darkness.

Those hands found material soon enough, but it was velvety, heavy, nothing like Kommissar’s slinky blue top Beca had fisted her hands in earlier that night. She resolved to stay put until the lights came up, which they were doing, gradually. She looked behind her and saw the convoluted fly-in pulley system that suggested, _yep, this is very much a grand 'ole kinda theatre,_ and then above her, at the multitude of hanging gels that threw just the right colors against the scrim upstage. Beca realized as the lights came up that she was tugging on a wing curtain; she quickly released it and sidestepped to get a look at the auditorium.

And wow. Holy... just, _wow_.

It was so fancy, all ochre and cream-shell plasters and crimson cushions, curlicuing swoops and carved details decorating the reserved boxes, swirls and buttresses and wave-like shapes cast into a mold that was probably _centuries_ older than she was. She moved downstage and studied the orchestra pit, the floodlights running up the sides of the rows, the— _holy shit_ —fresco mural painted free-handed on the circular ceiling, the chandelier worth so much she could use it to pay off Chloe’s student loan debt even if she failed Russian Lit again.

A baby grand piano stood downstage right, set off by numerous stage wings with heavy, sound-bouncing curtains. The proscenium arch seemed gilded as well, little cut-outs chisled with painstaking detail, in accordance with the other design minutiae of the Teater. There were outdoor concerts and Carnegie Hall but something about _this_ , about the history, the legacy, and the utter barrenness of a place that still reeked of grandeur that sent tiny goosebumps prickling along her hairline, slithering down her vertebrae.

“This is—”

Beca turned to the left and there stood Kommissar, center stage, feet planted shoulder-width apart, a soft light casting half of her face in shadow. She faced the empty auditorium with her shoulders pressed down and her chin held high, her eyes aimed toward the topmost seat in the balcony. And she was perfect. Not, I’m-nervous-complimenting-you-and-I-can’t-stop-making-positive-remarks-to-save-my-life perfect, but, you-were-born-to-be-on-lavish-international-stages-and-bring-people-to-their-feet-night-after-night perfect. She had the stature and the carriage for stage performance, possessed the knowledge and respect for music and entertainment that made a stand-out star. Beca had always thought of Kommissar as more of a solo artist, but she’d never considered where the other woman might have her sights set.

“—gorgeous,” Beca breathed.

“And even this is not my favorite theatre in Europe,” Kommissar said offhandedly, gesturing toward the chairs before them. “I do not like the seats, too… bouncy? And there is too much echo from the hall.”

“Will you sing for me?” Beca asked, walking with a little more assurance out on the stage.

“Sing?” Kommissar asked, turning back to face her. Her carriage was still strangely elegant, as if she was preternaturally aware of the implications of moving on such a palatial stage.

“Yeah, sing. That thing we do for kicks at car shows, company conventions, World Championships… sing,” Beca asked again. “It is your livelihood, right?”

“I fear I will not sound very good,” Kommissar said, crisscrossing to the piano downstage.

Because, of course she plays the fucking _piano_.

Beca couldn’t picture the Kommissar conducting DSM practices on some tablet app with preprogrammed chord progressions like herself; Beca would usually just jury-rig the application into relaying the Bella’s mixes. Nope. That’s not at all how DSM would do it. They’d congregate in sections around a grand Steinway, sheet music at the ready, Kommissar playing out their various parts until the melodies and notes had been driven into their brains like a railroad stake through the temple. The passion and intensity Kommissar spoke of earlier that evening seemed almost intrinsic, seeping from her pores with every turn the German made on stage, whether she was performing or not.

Kommissar lifted the keyboard cover and fiddled with a few notes, no real melody in mind.

“Why wouldn’t you sound good? You always sound good,” Beca protested, following her like a puppy.

“We’ve been drinking. Alcohol is not good for singing,” Kommissar said, hitting a major D chord, then sliding into B minor. She followed up with E minor, and the beginnings of a familiar song popped into the back of Beca’s head. “We have done no vocal warmups.”

“Live a little,” Beca suggested. “It’s not like you’re jumping a gate double your size, or anything.”

Kommissar stared at the keys under her fingers, and twiddled on the low notes, played a few minor chords and sustained them as Beca waited.

“Sing with me, and I will,” Kommissar bargained, shifting easily toward where Beca stood above her. She slid down the bench and indicated the spot beside her, letting Beca sit. “Should I play, or…”

“No, I wanna see how good you are on your own,” Beca said, fishing her phone out of her pocket. She flipped around to one of her standard beat mixes and smiled above the device at Kommissar’s raised brow. “Match the beat, since… you know, your team’s so good at that.”

Kommissar produced a Cheshire grin as Beca started drumming her fingers on the edge of the piano. Beca placed the phone on the music stand and watched Kommissar focus on the electric metronome, bobbing her head a bit. Then the co-lead for DSM opened her mouth, and—

“Nice to, meet you, where you, been? I could show you, incredible things—”

Kommissar pulled Beca’s right hand up in her left and wrapped their fingers together while she sang.

“Magic, madness, heaven, sin, saw you there, and I thought, oh my God, look at that face, you look like, my next mistake. Love’s a game, want to play?”

She placed Beca’s hand atop her own, and set to hitting chords on the piano for each transition, in what Beca considered a surprising song choice. Her vocals were pristine, clear as crystal, never mind the alcohol. Beca was a little caught up in the intimacy of it all, a private serenade in a royal theatre, her hand atop Kommissar’s, feeling her knuckles and joints working to lay out the chord sequence for the selected song. Kommissar was almost all the way through the first chorus before Beca dared end the moment by joining in.

“’cause I’ve got a blank space, baby, and I’ll write your—”

“When the night—has come… And the land is dark. And the moon, is the only, light we see—” Beca sang.

“Cherry lips, crystal skies, I could show you incredible things—” Kommissar continued.

“No I won’t, be afraid. No I won’t shed a tear—”

“Stolen kisses, pretty, lies—”

“Just as long, as you stand—”

“—baby I’m your queen—”

“—stand by me—”

Kommissar quit playing as Beca took up the alternate song, pairing well as far as key, melody, and beats were concerned, but drastically missing the mark thematically. “Blank Space” was a fling. “Stand by Me”? Well… rather more… _something_ , Beca decided.

“So darling, darling, stand, by me. Oh, won’t you stand, by me. Oh stand now, stand by me,” Beca finished, metronome ticking louder than a countdown clock on some sort of explosive device. Because, at least for Beca, something was about to explode. She just… didn’t know exactly what it was.

Kommissar dropped Beca’s hand and chuckled grimly, nodding to herself in a resigned fashion that Beca couldn’t really interpret.

“You would, little Bella,” Kommissar mumbled, brushing a thumb over Beca’s cheek.

“I would what?” Beca asked, growing bolder, wanting _more,_ turning into the touch and wrapping her hand over Kommissar’s leg. Those soft hands with chipped black nail polish, cinnamon scents, hair that felt like a golden fleece—

“Make me the villain,” Kommissar answered.

Beca squeezed tighter on her leg and met Kommissar’s eyes, and the regret she saw there totally _humanized_ the German, so much so that Beca felt she’d been punched in the gut by Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

“What do you mean?” Beca asked.

“I know you have that boy,” Kommissar answered, dropping her hand from Beca’s face. “He follows you so closely, forever underfoot. And this—whatever we are doing here—is all very nice. I thought it could be for fun, a brief encounter, because you amuse me so. But... I..." Kommissar turned her attention back to the piano and heaved a long-suffering sigh. "It does not feel so playful anymore. It is not my place to make you feel guilty because you are so excitable after a big performance.”

“An attitude like that doesn’t make you a villain,” Beca argued, seeking out Kommissar’s hand, placing it back on her face, because she sure as hell _wanted_ that hand there, damn the oncoming guilt and perplexing feelings that went along with it. “In fact, it makes you kinda chivalrous, which, you really didn’t need to add to your already staggeringly impressive list of qualities. And who are you to make decisions for me, anyway?”

“It is not that I… I mean to say…” Kommissar continued, turning her neck skyward, as if the rafters and the hanging lights might help her finish her thoughts. “It’s that I don’t really _care_ that you have someone else, because right now—”

Beca drew closer and latched her lips to Kommissar’s neck, kissing and sucking and pulling at that damned hair tie, just so she could get her hands tangled in that glossy hair. Even rain damp, mussed by the night, tangy from glistening sweat at a cheesy arcade bar in the middle of a foreign city… it was still a _privilege_ that this woman even paid Beca the tiniest bit of attention. She bit, sharp and sweet and deep into the Kommissar’s neck and _God,_ oh _fuck_ , her skin is like taffy, like funnel cakes and prime rib and sorbet. And her body, rolling against Beca’s, like massages so deep they’d make somebody cry, like heat and pressure just perfect enough to shatter every worry and insecurity she’d ever harbored into eighty-five thousand granules of sand.

Beca took Kommissar’s ear lobe between her teeth, then rolled the rhinestone stud shining there around with her tongue. She bit gently, nibbled like the mouse that she was, and the German hissed, placing a halting hand on Beca’s shoulder.

“Der Gott, Beca—”

“I don’t care either,” Beca whispered, placing her hands on Kommissar’s torso, running them up and down her bare arms, sidling closer just so she could feel the woman’s body against her own. Just that touch, that spark, and she didn’t care about Jesse or about her friends or her obligations, just about how this woman could perform with the best of them and it would be a… well, it would be one hell of a ride to listen to her hitting some breathy high notes in bed.

Kommissar twisted and nearly pulled Beca on top of her, so outrageously close and perilously perched on the piano bench as they were. They kissed too long, bit too hard, sucked and slid and touched until they were panting, smiling inanely at each other on top of some old dude’s chair at the home of the Danish symphony.

And the ridiculousness of the affair set them both to laughing so hard Beca nearly fell out of Kommissar’s lap.

“Come now,” Kommissar said, hoisting herself up and tugging Beca along with her. “We are much too sober for dry humping in a royal Teater.”

“Yeah, we can always blame an inevitability on the booze,” Beca agreed, walking over to where she’d set her prized liquor bottle. “Lucky us, I’ve even got shot glasses.”

“How refined,” Kommissar said.

“So… drunken tour of the theatre?” Beca asked, twisting the paper cap off of the bottle and tugging the cork out of the top of it. She put the bottle to her lips and pulled a slug, coughing when she brought the bottle back down. “Oh my God…” Beca hacked, beating on her chest like a gorilla. “That is searing liquid fire.”

“Really?” Kommissar asked, checking out the twelve-year-old single malt. “My uncle used to drink this, it’s supposed to be… eh, smooth,” she commented, taking her own pull on the bottle. That one gulp turned into two, turned into three, and her only sign of discomfort was a twitch of the nostril when she plucked the bottle from her lips.

“How the hell did you—”

“Iron stomach,” Kommissar answered, clearing her throat and jostling her head just the slightest. “Now, you wished for a tour?” she said, turning on her foot toward the edge of the stage where the steps to the orchestra pit descended.

“You sure you’re gonna be able to make it back up those stairs with this in your system?” Beca asked, slinging the capped bottle by her side. The two shot glasses were abandoned onstage, Beca opting for bottle-chugging that she hoped came off as more bad-ass than pathetic.

“You would be quite surprised by my drunken feats,” Kommissar answered, disappearing into the dark of the theatre.

“Somehow I doubt that,” Beca grumbled, tailing her would-be lover, charged by hormones and melodies. “If walking becomes a problem, we can always play 20 questions.”

 

* * *

 

 

“First performance you ever felt sick over?”

“Ah, I was seven,” Kommissar said, setting her hands on top of Beca’s.

“Did you barf on stage?”

“Do I seem like the type of person to ever do such a thing, no matter my age?”

They were both sitting cross-legged on the stage of the theatre, having indeed gotten too drunk to run up and down balconies and onto the catwalks Kommissar had access to with Jonas’s keys. They had made it out _to_ and then made out _on_ the second-floor exterior balcony, large stone columns and faux lantern lights making Beca feel like she was traipsing about a castle with an all-access pass. She and Kommissar had stumbled on the descent, then agreed to work off their buzz with Beca’s suggested twenty questions while playing the brain-teasing and always entertaining go-tos of thumb war, rock, paper, scissors, and their current endeavor, slap-hands.

Beca twitched her hands beneath Kommissar’s but the German didn’t even flinch.

_Dammit_.

“What was so awful about it?” Beca asked, tickling the edges of Kommissar’s palms with her index fingers.

“It was my first solo, a children’s play,” Kommissar explained. “A traditional German performance for my school, and I feared I would forget the lyrics.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“A small primary institution in Germany, probably similar to yours in America.”

Beca wrapped her hands over Kommissar’s with what she felt was lightning speed, only to come down on thin air as Kommissar jerked her hands out of the way just in time. She winked and stuck out her tongue at Beca, who was caught between wanting to flip the woman off and wanting to suck that tongue into her own mouth. She quelled both urges and reset her hands.

“Friggin’ ninja,” Beca muttered, as Kommissar scooted closer. “I can’t really imagine you being nervous,” Beca said, twitching under Kommissar’s hands.

No flinch. Not even a blink. Like trying to squeeze water from stone.

“I was not nervous for long. I performed adequately, but they rather beat the nerves out of you if you decide to keep performing for the choirs.”

“Seriously?” Beca asked, dropping her hands and brows furrowing in worry. “They _beat_ you?!”

_No wonder she hates losing._

“The one time I get the idiom correct and you understand the literal version, Tiny Maus,” Kommissar replied with an eye roll, resetting Beca’s hands to lie flat in the air. She placed her own underneath Beca’s palms and began stroking her fingers on the underside of the skin there.

“Tickling is cheating,” Beca said.

“Nein, merely tactics,” Kommissar said, twitching her hands so that Beca jerked hers out of place, practically elbowing herself in the torso.

“That’s one,” Kommissar smirked.

“I have a hard time imagining you performing in a traditional German play as a kid,” Beca said, trying to distract her opponent. “Did they deck you out in braids and lederhosen?”

“Lederhosen is for _boys_ ,” Kommissar practically snarled, jiggling her hands underneath Beca’s so that Beca flinched again, only less violently this time.

“Two!”

“That doesn’t count! It was a… nervous tic,” Beca argued.

“I thought I did not make you so nervous any more,” Kommissar replied.

“That was before I put myself in the position to let you obliterate all feeling in my hands,” Beca parried, as Kommissar wrapped her hands over Beca’s and brought her palms down with enough force to split concrete.

“FUCK!!!” Beca sputtered, curling into a pseudo-fetal position and clutching her stinging hands close.

“Oh, Mäuschen,” Kommissar grinned, extending her hands again.

“I’m not buying it,” Beca said. “You’re a lederhosen-wearing hand slapper that can also make me forget my name when we kiss, but that doesn’t mean I trust you.”

“I promise not to hurt you, Beca,” Kommissar said, crooking her fingers devilishly.

Beca shot a critical look at those lethal German extremities before tentatively extending her hands out to Kommissar. Kommissar took them, gentle as a breeze, and placed cloud-soft kisses to the red knuckles, licking briefly, before pulling back and blowing cool air onto Beca’s raw skin.

“I am sorry,” Kommissar said, placing a final kiss to Beca’s palm. “I was quite good at this game when I was a child. I am still very good, apparently.”

“Do you kiss everyone’s injuries once you’re finished murdering them?” Beca quipped.

“I do not think I was quite so affectionate in school,” Kommissar replied.

“So where did you grow up?” Beca asked, grabbing Kommissar’s hand and forming a hold for thumb war number five. Not like she hadn’t lost the last four. The woman had an impossibly long reach with that digit.

“You wouldn’t know it,” Kommissar said, dropping her eyes to the wiggling digits between them. Beca felt the woman’s grip tense, so she extended her thumb back as far as she could.

“Why do you always do that?”

Kommissar feinted left with her thumb and Beca attacked, only to have her thumb crushed in a tight hold for a three-count that Beca struggled bodily against, while Kommissar placed her chin in her other hand, seemingly out of effortless boredom.

“Beat you? I cannot help it, I am just superior,” Kommissar said, releasing Beca’s thumb. “In most things,” she qualified.

“No, why won’t you tell me anything about yourself?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know if this is a regular thing for you, but I don’t usually sneak casual acquaintances into international theatres, nor am I big on sticking my tongue into a casual acquaintance’s mouth. You at least know my name.”

“You know my name,” Kommissar replied, leaning back, locking her arms so that she was propped up, facing Beca.

“Your _real_ name, you—wait. How did you know my name was Rebecca? I _never_ introduce myself as Rebecca.”

“It was in the Worlds program,” Kommissar answered quickly.

“No it wasn’t,” Beca argued. “I always list my name as Beca for performance stuff. Wait a… _and_ you knew my last name!”

“What are you talking about, Fussy Maus?” Kommissar asked.

“When you introduced me to Jonas, you said I was Rebecca Mitchell,” Beca said, putting a few of those stubborn puzzle pieces into place. “And it was like he _knew_ me…. Oh my God,” Beca paused, studying a blank-faced Kommissar. “You totally looked me up!”

“I very much doubt I will ever look up to you, Tiny Maus. Even at this angle.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Beca said. “You checked up on me… and then you _talked_ about me.”

“I need to know how to best combat the competition,” Kommissar answered, back to poker face. “So perhaps I did study your performances, but you should not flatter yourself.”

Meanwhile, Beca scrunched up her face in an amused expression.

She had her now.

“Does Chloe have a boyfriend?” she asked.

“Vhat?” Kommissar asked. “Why would I know that?”

“Because you knew I did,” Beca smiled, thrilling little shots of adrenaline riding her veins because _Kommissar liked her_ enough to do a little research, to see if she was dating anyone. She continued her line of questioning: “I just wanted to know what other personal information you had on the Bellas.”

“Do not try to act smart, Feisty Maus. It can be very dangerous,” Kommissar warned.

“In what way?” Beca asked.

Kommissar looked off into the auditorium and sighed, shifting so that she could stand.

“We should prepare to leave. Jonas will go off of his shift soon,” she said, glancing at a stylized wristwatch. “It is nearly dawn.”

“At four in the morning?”

“Latitudes,” Kommissar shrugged, extending a hand to pull Beca up. “The further North you are on the globe, the longer the days in the—”

“I know how latitude and longitude works, thanks,” Beca snarked, taking a breath after such an abrupt body shift. They’d been sitting and talking and drinking on the stage for hours, but they never really touched on anything too serious. Beca had been pretty open about her background, but Kommissar was locked up tighter than Knox.

“I’m more concerned with the fact that you don’t want to tell me anything about yourself, despite the fact that you obviously have a thing for me,” Beca said, wobbling to stand. Kommissar approached and offered her a steadying arm. “And maybe a little about how I’m gonna get over that fence again.”

“The alcohol has rendered you senseless, Tiny Maus.”

“Why won’t you talk to me? I… like you,” Beca mumbled, more embarrassed at the sincere confession than by the involuntary compliments. “And forgive me if dates in beautiful European cities give a girl the wrong impression, but I kinda thought you liked me, too.”

Kommissar softened, then began gathering up the empty bottle and glasses, Jonas’s keys and her own secretive package she’d gotten while at D&B’s.

“What does it matter if I like you, Rebecca Mitchell, 23, of Greensboro? The fact that you’ve won the National A Capella championship three times and enjoy dark coffee and 80s glimmer rock and graduated with a degree in music production while working an internship at a record label does not change our circumstances. Me knowing things about you does not change the fact that you are in a relationship, we live in different countries, and I am getting on a plane tomorrow morning,” Kommissar finished, and Beca was almost positive she saw the German’s eyes water, that had to be it… though her own vision was pretty blurry, her eyes stinging from the alcohol ingested.

Totally the alcohol.

Not the fact that she’d probably never see Kommissar again.

Kommissar crossed and hugged Beca close, kissing her temple.

“I think it best not to be too personal. We would not want to get attached,” Kommissar mumbled.

“Yeah, that’d be the worst,” Beca agreed grimly, slipping her hands around Kommissar’s waist.

They swayed drunkenly, regretfully, on the stage in the theatre for a few lost minutes. Kommissar eventually pulled away, nodding off towards the wings.

“Would you like to watch the sunrise, Tiny Maus?” Kommissar asked.

“I’d really just rather have sex with you, honestly,” Beca answered, “Even if that’s probably not the best idea.”

“Ja, I don’t think it is a good idea,” Kommissar replied, chagrined. “However—”

“P-Please,” Beca said, not just stepping but _leaping_ out on the end of the limb. “And if the hotel faces east we can do it with the curtains open. Get that sunrise you were talking about.”

“Sunrise sex?” Kommissar asked, that classic, sexy smirk sliding into place across her features. “Let us go, Feisty Maus.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Tried to shoot everybody who commented a 'thank you' response, but to all the people kudoing and bookmarking and subscribing, why JUST THANKS! This has been such a fun little project to work on during some free time of mine, and I really like that all you readers are taking to it so well. Next chapter will be the last for this fic, but thanks for sticking with it so long! I always appreciate critical feedback if you feel so inclined! Additionally, the rating might change, but that doesn't mean there will be outright smut. That's not really what this fic is about.
> 
> Also, Blank Space/Stand by Me mash-up courtesy of Imagine Dragons Spotify sessions, so there's that.


	5. Chapter 5

Damn the motherfucking bells.

Like, not bonging, not resonant, but trilling, tinkling, annoying as hell.

Beca groaned and rolled over, slapping at the little illuminated rectangle at her bedside that would not _shut up_. She managed to pry sandpaper lids open over her eyeballs and adjusted, slowly, to the dimmed grey of the hotel room. She yawned, rubbing her fingers into her eyes to wipe the minor hangover from them. She wrestled to get the sheets off, feet caught up in the plushy duvet. With little direction or focus she clambered from the bed, crossing to draw back the heavy curtain blocking the midday sun from flooding their room.

_Their_ room.

Beca turned abruptly back to the bed. “Kommissar…”

The bed nearest the door, the one Kommissar had said Pieter used, was made. Beca’s clothes were folded neatly on top of it, her shoes laid out on the floor below like her first day of preschool. She wondered—not _hoped_ , no, not that—if someone was in the bathroom.

“Kommissar?”

Beca stilled and listened, but all was silent, save for the muffled traffic noise four floors below.

Kommissar was gone.

And so was her luggage case, the one Beca had stumbled over early this morning when they’d come barreling into the room, all tongues and teeth and quippy little teases.

* * *

 

 

_“Oh my God, that thing is huge,” Beca said, nearly falling face-first into a bag of mesh, combat boots, fake eye lashes and kohl liner. “You use all that for competition?”_

_Kommissar didn’t reply, hands too busy yanking the blue halter from her own neck and shimmying out of her shirt._

_Beca gulped soundlessly, legs giving out at the sight of a black bra and bare midriff, and those black pants she wanted gone more than she’d ever wanted to win Worlds. Kommissar tugged her hair out of its tie and ran those beautifully tapered fingers through it, and Beca almost choked, thinking about how—_ skillful _—a pianist’s fingers might be when set to… other… endeavors._

_“You do like the view, Tiny Maus?” Kommissar asked, approaching Beca like some stealthy panther. She smiled at Beca, who was sitting on the end of the mattress, and leaned over her, craning her neck in just far enough to graze, but never to kiss. Beca followed obediently, searching, whining every time Kommissar retracted without actually brushing Beca’s face with her lips._

_“Stop teasing me,” Beca muttered, though her complaint quickly morphed into a yelp when she found a knee planted at the apex of her legs._

Fucking yes!

_“It is you who are teasing me, little Maus,” Kommissar said, wordlessly directing Beca to lift her arms overhead, so that she could divest Beca of her tank top. Kommissar leaned down to kiss Beca delicately atop her hotel bed, in the soft morning light. The room was lit by the dawn, the second sheer curtain drawn over the windows for discretion._

_Pseudo-sunrise._

_After a significant... well... a pretty revelatory night on the town._

_Definitely a little more than a one-night stand, since it was... sorta... morning._

_“H-h-how so?” Beca asked, trying not to think about the implications of love-making as opposed to fucking. She wrestled with the waistband of Kommissar’s pants to distract herself._

_She wasn’t getting very far, what with Kommissar essentially attached to her neck like a leech, sucking to bruising. An expert flick of fingers saw Beca’s bra clasp undone, but the assault on her neck was so voracious Beca hardly possessed the mental capacity for feeling self-conscious._

_“Hmh hmh,” Kommissar chuckled, standing once more to tug her pants down her legs. She stepped out with all the regality of a queen while Beca began fighting the losing battle with her own yoga pants. Kommissar helped tug the final leg off and pushed Beca back down on the bed, setting her knee back at Beca’s crotch so that she could fully hover over her._

_“God—” Beca mumbled, running her hands over Kommissar’s face, her torso, through her hair, around her neck._

_“You make it seem like I could in fact mail you with me, if I just put you in the luggage bag, Tiny Maus,” Kommissar kissed her again, hands wandering, squeezing, pinching, stroking… "The option is so... tempting."  
_

_“I’m—hah!—pretty… flexible,” Beca gasped, as she ground herself against Kommissar’s thigh._

_“Would you like to continue this discussion or do you plan to show me?” Kommissar pulled back to sit up on her knees above Beca, slipping her bra straps over her shoulders and unhitching the contraption from behind._

_And with Kommissar bare and beautiful above her, it took every ounce of steadily draining willpower to keep herself from drooling._

_“You’re fucking gorgeous,” Beca whispered, sliding her hands up the outside of Kommissar’s thighs. Her breathing was about as even as gravel, because Kommissar was doing this divine little hip jostle that increased a heated pressure right—fucking—_ there _._

_“Ja…” Kommissar murmured softly, running her fingers over Beca’s naval, up her ribs, brushing the underside of Beca’s breast. She leaned down again to kiss Beca, all balmy exhales and biting little indents to her lips. Beca reciprocated enthusiastically, with a wily little tongue and wandering hands that had Kommissar’s spine warping, ever so slightly, into Beca’s groping hold. Kommissar propped herself on her elbows and slid her torso slightly to Beca’s side while one of her hands moved in a southerly direction._

_“I am…” Kommissar began, never taking her eyes off of Beca’s face, “or am about to…_ fuck _gorgeous.”_

_Beca sucked her own lips in, unable to suppress a wet sort of half-smile. Gorgeous? Kommissar thought she was… and that_ hand _… and this powerful, exceptional, talented, precious woman…_

Don’t you cry. Don’t you fucking cry, Beca Mitchell.

_“Less talking, more touching,” Beca demanded in a whisper, pulling Kommissar’s forehead down against her own._

_Kommissar didn’t usually take kindly to orders given by other people, but in this case… she wholeheartedly obliged._

 

* * *

 

Beca huffed to herself in the lonely room and turned back toward the bed, wanting nothing more than to go back and sleep for days, and maybe dream, too, replay last night until the images were seared in her mind’s eye, the sounds in her memory, of breathy sighs and meaningless mumbles and a few sharp, pitchy gasps that sounded better to her than five-part harmonies.

She turned on the lamp at her bedside and found her phone on the charger, two aspirin, and a glass of water ready for consumption. A note was tucked under the water.

_I texted Chloe to let her know you were well. She is not very happy with you, liebling._

Beca popped the aspirin in her mouth and chugged the water, knowing her head would thank her for it later. But not on an empty stomach. She should probably see about getting some breakfast or… lunch at this point. Think about calling Chloe, or Amy, and definitely Jesse. Think about vacating the room too, since she had no clue when check-out was at fancy places like this. No idea how long Kommissar had booked the room for, knowing DSM would be moving right along, like the jet-setters they were, to continue with their world tour.

To continue their awesome life. _Her_ awesome life.

Without Beca.

Beca wasn’t angry. Nope. Beca had never been an emotional, resentful, embittered, hostile—

Oh wait.

She sighed, scrolling through the massive amounts of text messages on her phone, shooting a quick text off to Chloe to get the Bellas’s location. She tried not to do it… really, she did… but she scrolled to the Ks in her contacts just to see if the woman had left a number. An email address. Hell, even a LinkedIn profile would work at this point.

No such luck.

Her phone buzzed with a message from Chloe:

_U R N So. Much. Trouble._

Well, fuck.

She didn’t have much time to wallow, as a quick knock sounded at the door.

“Room service,” heavily accented Danish rang from the outside of Kommissar’s room, Beca scrambling to cover her very nude self with something more substantial than a sheet.

“Just a minute!” Beca hollered, darting into the bathroom. She found a robe, but finally got a good look at herself under the bright bathroom bulbs. Hickeys everywhere, hair very tangled with asymmetrical, post-sex volume, and one rather alarming bite-mark turned bruise on her left breast that she’s going to have a lot of trouble explaining.

_Oh… shit._

Time for that later.

“Okay, okay,” Beca said, tying the robe together as she opened the door, only to be nearly run over by a service tray the size of a go-kart.

“What the—”

“Belgian waffles?” the staffer asked, as Beca took in the elaborate breakfast for one, complete with white table cloth, creamy china and silver cutlery, a dark roast French-press, orange juice, Danishes, Belgian waffles, seasonal fruit, and a trio of daisies sprouting out of a vase. Everything was hot and extravagant and Beca’s stomach called out to its people the moment she got a whiff of the waffles.

“Are you sure this is for me?” Beca asked the young man, clad in a red hotel service vest and ridiculous striped bow tie.

“Eh… 411, ja? Belgian waffles… _lille mus_?”

“Sorry… what—?”

“Uh…” the waiter was at a loss, but proceeded to bring his hands up under his chin to make a twisted face, scrunching his nose and _screeing_ to indicate—

“Oh! Little mouse?” Beca asked.

“Ja.”

“Yup, that’s me,” Beca said, signing for the food. “I don’t have a tip…”

“It is settled already,” the waiter said, passing over an envelope with BECA written in stark, straight black script. “Oh,” the server said, pulling a box wrapped in brown paper from beneath the tablecloth. “Enjoy your breakfast.”

“What is this?” Beca asked, staring at the strange package.

“Ehm… Jeg dommer ike,” the boy said.

“What?”

“I… ask not the questions?” the boy tried again in English, giving her a conspiratorial wink.

“Holy sh—I’m not a prostitute!” Beca huffed, as the server quickly backtracked out the door.

She grabbed a Danish and stuffed the wonderfully flaky pastry in her mouth, then ripped into the package while she perched on the end of Kommissar’s bed. The paper fell to the floor and the Danish fell from her mouth.

_God, Kommissar…_

Beats by Dr. Dre. HD. Solo2. In the space grey and black. Sleeker than a Lamborghini. Hell, _the_ Lamborghini of the headphone world. They could run upwards of $300 back home…

Maybe she should take back that prostitute comment.

She checked over the specs and of course, they were top of the line, and of course, would pair fine with her iPhone, her Mac that Kommissar had seen her use for soundcheck during their rehearsals at Worlds… and she’d been so swept up with those _earbuds_ on the airport tram… it was the whole reason she’d bumped into Kommissar in the first place!

Damn her.

Even in gift-giving, she was perfect.

Beca tore into her letter next:

 

_Dearest Little Maus,_

_You will never know how it pained me to leave you this morning. I might have taken your picture, sleeping quietly beside me, as you did of me while I was on stage. I suppose you will never know? I know, yes, what you look like when you sleep. That you have this little piece of hair that falls in your mouth. When I went to remove it you swatted my hand and held it captive, and you smiled so dreamily it created this large stone in my throat. I cannot fully describe the feeling in English, but seeing you lying there, holding my hand, knowing my bags were packed behind you… Beca, it felt like I would never sing again, the discomfort was so real. It also distracted me from your drool on my finger, so… perhaps something to look out for, Tiny Maus?_

 

_On a lighter note, I do hope you like your breakfast. I remember something about you claiming to devour me like a Belgian waffle? What is it that you Americans say?_

 

_Mission accomplished._

 

_I looked up the word this morning, and it is an apt description for you, Beca. You were, (and presumably will be) quite_ ravenous _. I set the alarm so you will have time to eat and prepare yourself for the day, though I know that you likely did not get to sleep long. I know I didn’t. My mind was… preoccupied. And not just with excuses I will have to conjure once Pieter gets a look at my neck. There is also a mark on my hip that I cannot believe… well, you certainly earned your ‘feisty’ title last night, liebling._

 

_Beca, I am honored to have met you, to have known you, to have competed and passed an evening with you, only if for a small time. You have such talents, though your voice is not the strongest of these. Please, it is not a… dig, as you told me last night, merely an observation from a fellow professional. Your greatest asset is your_ ear _, Beca. You listen and know, within yourself, sounds and noises and beats that provoke feeling. I never even spoke during our love-making, but you played me as an instrument, just by listening to sighs and grunts and wordless assurances. Your ears, especially with their—what did you call them?—‘ear monstrosities’ are going to be your greatest tool. I myself, do not think those ornaments are so monstrous. In fact, I find them hot as hell, Mäuschen. Please accept a gift, a tool, to further hone your talents._

 

_(Do not fluster yourself over expenses; it was my prize at last night’s dance off.)_

 

_My only regret is that I am not there to share breakfast with you. Well, perhaps that is not my only regret. If we had acknowledged out mutual attraction earlier this year, when we first met… I do not wish to think of the possibilities. For now, I will content myself with memories of tracing your tattoos and singing with you onstage at the Teater. If I think too hard I will do something irrational, like skip my flight. I believe you know me a bit better now, and therefore know I cannot do that; though I very much do wish to know you better, to pass more time with you. As we have both said, timing and geography, as well as our standing rivalry, are not on our sides._

 

_But for yesterday and last night? I suppose Copenhagen served us well. I doubt I will ever forget what it feels like to kiss you._

 

_I cannot promise to follow you, as I did not leave a means for you or I to contact each other. I believe, again, it will be easier this way. But if I ever watch American music awards one day and see your name, I’ll be smiling, knowing how deserving you are, and how much passion you employed to realize that dream._

 

_As for myself, I will continue performing. With or without DSM, it is my passion. I have trained for it, and, as you know, am very good at it. If we ever run across each other again, do come speak to me. I will always be receptive to my Tiny Maus. I’ve left another small reminder of our time in the envelope, though I don’t think it will ever equal spending actual time with you. I almost wish that we could collaborate creatively, but perhaps that desire is not in our cards._

 

_Auf Wiedersehen Liebling, Beca, my Tiny Maus,_

 

_-L_

 

* * *

 

 

What the—why was the paper so fucking _blurry?_ And why did her chest feel like a lodestone was crushing it, and why did she have to wipe her face from all the stupid _liquid salt_ running over her cheeks? And why was the ink on the page blurring, why was the paper _shaking_?

Why did _SHE_ have to be so fucking perfect?!

Beca flopped backwards on the bed and thrashed childishly against the sheets.

Why did this friggin’ letter, that dumb envelope, make her feel like winning Worlds was some kind of stupid consolation prize?

She chucked the letter across the bed, but a strip of paper fluttered out of the envelope and landed face down on the sheets. She knew, before she even turned it over, that it wasn’t going to be pretty.

But Beca lay in the lonely bed, staring at those four dumb pictures, picking at the most thoughtful breakfast she’d ever eaten. Her gaze usually gravitated to the second picture, the one of Kommissar smiling, so open and unlike Beca’s first impression that she physically _ached_ for not knowing the woman any better. She could still smell her on the pillow next to her, cinnamon sweat and minty breath. 

L… something.

There’d always be the printed Worlds program, Beca thought. She could cross-reference the members of Das Sound Machine with the initial, see if she could—

No. That's not a good idea.

That is exactly what Kommissar, _L_ , didn’t want.

For her to get too attached. For either of them, really. And if that letter was anything to go by, the headphones, the alarm, the breakfast, even the freaking aspirin at her bedside…

_They were both already too attached._

But they were both, also, not staying on in fairytale Copenhagen. They both had lives, they both had jobs, they both had outside interests and talents that defined themselves individually that weren’t each other. But it didn't really invalidate their time together, their lives back home. They'd had something... _nice_ , something pretty special. Just because it couldn't last forever didn't make it mean any less.

And that was okay.

Beca finally pushed herself off of the mattress after her ride on her melancholic brain carousel, determined not to let Kommissar’s breakfast go to waste. She propped the picture strip up against the daisy vase and nodded, feeling like she’d achieved some tiny accomplishment. She unfurled a cloth napkin and placed it over her robe, then upturned the mug on the saucer and poured herself coffee that was still pretty hot. She drizzled butter and syrup on the waffles, dug in, and felt immensely better.

Beca could take it for what it was—not an experiment, like Chloe said, but an _experience_ —something fun and real and _good_ that came out of a lot of hard work, chance, and a pretty hefty amount of blind trust and attraction.

But it occurred to her, as she ate, dressed, and tucked Kommisar’s letter and pictures into the pockets of her hoodie, that the unnamable feeling she was wrestling with sounded, in her little mousy ears anyway, like a particular kind of music. Where the cadence and progressions were irregular, where the dissonance overpowered every other sound, so that there wasn't really a true ending to the song.

Walking along the quiet corridor and back to her hotel room, she heard the final note of hers and Kommissar’s song land: stunning, complex, and utterly unresolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus concludes their little jaunt through Copenhagen, which originally started out as a one-shot prequel to an actual multi-chap fic I had in my head that (considering how lengthy this behemoth came out to be) would probably clock in at like 100k words. Unfortunately, I don't think I have the time to produce something like that.
> 
> But I'm just gonna say thanks once more, for all the kudos and comments and subscriptions and hits! I don't feel like the pairing is super popular (Idk, I'm not on the Tumblr), so to have as many reads as you guys have racked up in such a short time makes me feel super special! I'll grovel once more for a bit of feedback/critique if you have any. I know some people wait for a work to finish to give their thoughts on the whole thing. So thanks again for reading this bittersweet little story, and best to the Becissar community as a whole!

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, I saw PP2. Twice. And yep, Kommissar is now my life goal. And also Flula. Bless Flula, he's the bees knees. I can't help but give backstory because I am physically incapable of writing one-off characters without SOME sort of motivation so... this could grow. It's already 5k longer than I expected. Feedback appreciated if you care to provide it!


End file.
